In at the deep end
Eoin Quinn back flips into the sapphirine waters of the French Mediterranean and gets lost in the colourful delights of the sea's natural treasures and hidden worlds
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Saturday July 26 2008
The large octopus enthusiastically excavating its new home at the bottom of the Bay of Cannes does not take kindly to uninvited visitors and retreats into its hole. Undaunted, I move closer and peer inside: the octopus gazes balefully back at me through a single, unblinking eye.
I am in the fashionable Cap d'Antibes in the south of France to dive the warm waters of the Mediterranean.
Juan-les-Pins is a bougainvillaea-strewn town roughly half-way between Cannes and St Tropez in the south and Nice and Monaco to the north. Its white sands gaze out across the pristine Bay of Cannes, where the water has been bleached an almost implausible azure colour by the endless sunshine. It's a heady mix that is irresistible to the super-rich. But it is a playground they must share with the rest of France.
It was here, in 1924, that Yves le Prieur invented the scuba system, later perfected by Jacques Cousteau. Today, the area is still popular with French divers but largely unexplored by those from the rest of Europe.
Dropping 30m to the bottom of the Bay of Cannes under the lighthouse known as La Fourmigue (below) is an unforgettable experience: a huge rock plateau slopes gently just below the surface, then drops vertically to more than 50m. The wall is teeming with life and vegetation of every imaginable hue. The water is crystal clear and visibility extends to well over 20m.
Alex Diamond, my dive guide and the owner of Diamond Diving, checks that everything is okay as we drift down to the first of our dive sites. La Grotte de Miro is an underwater cave beneath the lighthouse containing a sculpted memorial to Yves le Prieur. We swim through, admiring the sculpture and the thousands of jewel anenomes that cover the walls of the cave like huge daubs of yellow, red, purple and orange paint left by a frenzied painter.
We fin on to L'Enfer de Dante, a pinnacle rock rising more than 50m from the bottom of the bay and tapering to a narrow tip just below the surface. As we spiral downwards, Alex points out moray and conger eels hidden in rocky clefts. A huge grouper emerges momentarily, before retreating into shelter. A shoal of barracuda swims past like menacing teenagers hanging around a street corner.
Back on the dive boat, the 20-minute journey home to the dive centre at Port Gallice offers a chance to admire the Riviera coastline and ponder why more Irish divers don't include this area in their favourite dive destinations.
Alex, a qualified instructor with both the CMAS and PADI dive agencies, feels that the dive industry in the south of France has suffered because it already attracts such large numbers of tourists.
"This is the birthplace of diving but people don't realise that because France doesn't need to market itself as a diving destination in Ireland or the UK."
I suggest that the French Riviera's reputation as an expensive destination could also be to blame and Alex agrees. But he points out that there are budget options available, with competitive prices away from the beachfront tourist traps.
I am booked into a modest hotel in Juan-les-Pins, where many Diamond Diving clients stay: the two-star Hotel Alexandra (pictured far right) dates from the 19th century and is run by husband-and-wife team Ivan and Rachel Gresle, whose restaurant has a loyal following for its authentic Provencal dishes.
It's a diver-friendly place: simple but offering great food, lashings of hot water in the showers, and a comfortable bed. Of course, if you want to go high-end in Juan-les-Pins you can stay at a hotel with its own private beach, like the nearby Belle Rives, which will set you back €740 per night.
Juan-les-Pins is famous for its beaches -- which featured in Peter Sarstedt's famous song, Where Do You Go To (My lovely)? There are two public sandy beaches but most are now tied to restaurants and bars, and these seem to be the place to go if you want to watch the Beautiful People.
Food and wine is reasonably priced, but you'll pay a premium to sit at the water's edge and admire the sea views. The jazz festival each July draws the biggest names from the music world and there is a sidewalk of fame with signed handprints of those who have played.
As we head out for our second dive of the day, the boat is captained by a thick-set diver with curly grey hair and a beard. Jacques Tersinet is a diving legend and the man responsible for erecting the underwater statue in 1985 to commemorate the centenary of the birth of Yves le Prieur.
Alex Diamond has been diving since 1995. He came to the Riviera to work as a dive instructor after tiring of his job in the civil service in England. He set up Diamond Diving three years ago after realising local dive centres were not catering for English-speaking divers.
We return to La Fourmigue, but this time dive the other side of the lighthouse to find L'Arche, an azure window opening on to the Mediterranean Sea. It sits in a gnarled black reef bedizened with purple, red, and orange Gorgonian corals, anenome, and large sponges.
We fin on to Le Village: dozens of miniature houses, bridges, and temples scattered around the bottom of the bay. They were made for a long-abandoned movie project. Now, encrusted with marine growth, they are seen only by divers who float like silent giants over the Lilliputian townscape.
The next day takes us to the Cap d'Antibes to dive a site known as Le Grand Boule. At 30m we flush fierce scorpion fish from their hiding places. Delicate pink, purple, and leopard-spotted sea slugs abound and there are painted wrasse, dentex, tube worms and feather stars strewn across the reef.
On my safety stop I discover two more octopi. A small one, startled, jets off like a turbo-charged balloon. The other is fighting off the attentions of a dozen tiny black fish which have ganged up on it in a shallow crevice. They dart in, nipping it with their mouths, then dance out of reach as the octopus unfurls its tentacles and furiously swats at them.
Divers are picked up for an 8.30am start from Port Gallice and finish the second dive before 4pm, so there is plenty of time left for sightseeing at the 2,000-year-old port town of Antibes.
There are several museums, including the Picasso museum located in a castle where the artist worked during 1946. The Provencal food market is a colourful spectacle and stall-holders went out of their way to make sure we left with only the freshest produce.
Antibes has the largest yachting marina in Europe and billionaires' row is where the biggest boats are moored. It's a great place for celebrity-watching: Mick Jagger has a yacht here and Johnny Depp and Vanessa Paradis keep a home in Antibes, where they rub shoulders with the likes of Liam Neeson, Madonna, and Michael Caine.
- Eoin Quinn
