The Camargue -- June, 2012

We spent one day driving west from Aix.  My primary goal was to drive around the Camargue.  It is a wetlands area famous for its white horses, black bulls and wealth of birds.  The horses are considered to be one of the most ancient breeds in the world.  The cattle are also native to this area.  Both the horses and the cattle live in semi-wild conditions in the marshy lands of the Camargue.  Except for those that have been domesticized, of course. 

The Camargue is western Europe's largest river delta and is located south of Arles between the Grande Rhone and Petit Rhone rivers.  We drove down the west road all the way to Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer. 

I hadn't really thought much about this being a seaside resort area, but it is.  You go through lots of relatively wild marshy land and end up in a cool little town (population about 2300) with a lovely beach.  From what we saw, it would be a good place to vacation with a family.  I was glad we were there on a Monday when it wasn't crowded.

We walked along a paved path at the edge of the beach.

 

 

I'm sure it's beautiful at night with these lights.

We were hungry.  When are we not?  So we scoped out the few restaurants on the beach and chose one.  We sat outside and moved once due to the smokers.  I faced this mirror and got a pretty good reflection of the beach houses and the lights.

Trout mostly looked at the beach.  If you look closely, you can see me in the mirror taking the picture.

We had managed to find a decent parking place.  We took the long way back to it, which wasn't long at all.  This cowboy on a Camargue horse with a Camargue bull was the centerpiece of a traffic circle.

So was this fishing sailboat.

Trout wanted to be sure I got a picture of the birds flying around the cathedral.

Here's a traffic circle with a Camargue horse.

Some of the horses are tamed and you can ride them.  There were lots of places along the road where that was possible.

I preferred seeing them like this.

There is a huge bird sanctuary to be visited.  Trout's back was killing him, so he stayed in the car while I went in and walked around.  There is a total of 7KM of trails.  Needless to say, I didn't cover all of them.  But I saw enough to get a taste.

There are other critters in this environment -- especially nutria.

 

I'm not a bird expert, but I think these are storks.

This is some kind of raptor.

And what used to be my favorite bird -- lots of flamingos.  They are the signature bird of the sanctuary and they are everywhere. 

 

It's funny when they play follow the leader.

This leader got way out in front.

But you mostly see them feeding in groups.

There are egrets.

And cranes.

 

And islands through the rushes.

And lots of different birds nesting in the salt ceder trees.

These owls were great.

 

 

 

 

 

And here's another hawk of some kind.

 

 

 

 

This is not my first rodeo, so I decided to make use of the facilities before getting back on the road.  I thought these were uniquely designed.

 

 

 

They were more unique than I imagined.







 

 

So that was our brief visit to the Camargue.  We started getting a little goofy on the drive and since the horses are often referred to as the horses of the Camargue, we started calling everything we saw the xxxxx  "of the Camargue."  Even the near-elderly can be juvenile upon occasion.