At the Parc Ornithologique Pont de Gau

My shoulder is so much better I washed the breakfast dishes. Soon I hope to dress myself without contortions.

The gardien, M. & Mme. Laurent and their son Patrick

It was a good two-hour drive to a peninsula in the marshy Camargue where Janice had arranged us an outing to a manade, a type of farm in the Camargue that raises bulls for French bullfighting and the semi-wild Camargue horses in the care of a gardien. We were greeted by Estelle Laurent, a city-girl lawyer turned manadier by her marriage to Patrick, who, along with his parents and the gardien, was awaiting us on a Camargue horse at the entrance to their 1500-acre spread. The family’s business is renting bulls for shows. The more famous the bull, the more money everyone makes. The bulls are never killed but are the stars of the show, a sort of athletic competition in a bullring where young (20-ish) men have fifteen minutes to grab, in a certain order, three ribbons attached to the bull’s head. As bulls progress in their careers (age three to fifteen), fans follow them like movie stars. Manade Laurent bulls are known for following scrambling bullfighters into the stands. The bulls are more athletic than Spanish bulls, feeding outside on their own; the Laurents grow rice to desalinate the soil and in a three-year cycle provide fresh grassy fields for the bulls to graze. French bulls’ horns point up (like the bulls in the Lascaux cave, Estelle pointed out); Spanish bulls’ horns point down, making them easier to kill. The manade’s other livestock are the free-living Camargue horses, which find their own food and usually don’t wear shoes (strong feet and no rocks). The mares give birth on their own but the manadiers show up to get them used to humans and introduce them to oats, which is what the gardiens use to catch the horses when they need them. The dark-colored foals turn white by age six or seven.

We all climbed into a long wagon to ride out into the fields to visit the animals. The horses weren’t too far away. The bulls were herded close to the wagon from afar for our viewing pleasure. Baby bulls stared. Teenage boy bulls charged one another. Elder statesmen bulls with big bells around their necks kept things calm.

After we had asked Estelle all our questions, the wagon rode us past the burial place of Goya, their most beloved bull, so famous he had a farewell tour at the end of his career.  We were deposited at a large building to sample wine and big bowls of snacks–sun-dried tomatoes, anchovies (or were they sardines?–I avoided them), little toasts, tomato tapenade, black tapenade and the exquisite green tapenade, my new favorite Provençal dish.

Estelle and Patrick serving their guests

As we enjoyed our appetizers, Patrick pointed out pictures of cherished Goya on the wall and took us on a tour of his collection of world saddles lining one side of the room. Who knew saddles were so interesting? He even had a medieval sidesaddle to carry a long-robed priest. A big screen in one corner showed spirited clips of French bullfighting. Did you ever do that? someone asked Patrick. Yes, for two years when he was young, he said, and that was him right there on the video…running!

We took the road along the marsh and down to Les-Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mar, where several of the Marys and other friends of Jesus came ashore in 40 AD (another one of those pilotless boat stories) along with their dark-skinned maid Sarah who begged not to be left behind. Gypsies saw Sarah as one of their own and she is now a saint. Next to her reliquary in the crypt of the fortified church begun in the ninth century, Sarah’s statue was piled high with colorful drapes, among the ex-votos offered by gypsies; hundreds of candles kept the space stifling. We had just missed the feast days at the end of May with great local pageantry and gypsies from all over the world (who elect their queen here every few years). Currently Les-Saintes-Maries is a vacation town with restaurants, English tearooms, clothing shops and souvenir stands crowding around the church square, and gypsies coming too close dangling earrings-for-sale in your face.

Gazing in the window of a closed boulangerie, I overheard a local directing other tourists to an excellent bakery, which Maurice and I managed to find for a perfect lunch: the last two quiches, two generous slabs of mille-feuille and a drink. Then I went back to climb the church tower and circumambulate its roof while Maurice searched in vain for the WC (there was one sign, so it must have been somewhere).

The parc ornithologique pont de Gau was just up the road. They had WCs and two beautiful loop walks through the marshes with viewpoints and explanatory signs and hides where visitors could watch the birds: flamingos, herons, egrets, Himantopus himantopus (stilts) and all kinds of graceful creatures with French names (and for a bonus, mosquitoes too).

Heading home from the Camargue and look–it’s only 5:00 and Montmajour Abbey is right on the way! Maurice snoozed in the car while I had a quick walk-through, and quick it was, because when this monument closes at 6:30, that apparently means the workers want to be in their cars driving away, so they have to start corralling the visitors and locking doors long before, though smiling all the way. They closed from the far end, too, so if I hadn’t accidentally gone the wrong way in the first place, I’d have missed more than I did. It was a sprawling complex, part medieval and part 18th century, and Van Gogh painted here in 1888-89. A sloping terrace outside the crypt displayed dozens of now-empty graves cut into the rock.

The tiny 12th-century Chapelle St. Pierre was half-carved out of the hillside.

In the tower was a new exhibit on the cultural landscape of Provence, just the kind of thing I could have spent half a day on, but no time to interpret or ponder, and no publication in the shop.

It had been a long day and we soon collapsed at home with wine and tapenade and Camenbert….

Rescue owl at the bird park

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