For some people on our trip their goal was to spend every possible moment in Marseille on the beach. My objective? To go SCUBA diving in the Mediterranean. I had been communicating with a local dive shop to come diving with them and thankfully they also had a special offer for non-certified people to dive with them as well. The lucky and brave candidate was Liz- her boyfriend is a very good diver and she was interested in seeing what it was like and to explore Marseille a bit more. An added bonus was that they had a very reasonable price for a guided boat dive, only 30 Euros and 47 with equipment—not bad at all.
It was an interesting struggle communicating with the dive shop to book our spots. The response I got to “Est-ce que vous parlez anglais?” was “Attendez. Je trouverai quel qu’un.” Well this someone had very limited English, so I decided to stick with the French. It was a nice test. After repeating what she said several times to make sure I understood her, we were set. Then we just had to get there. We had a bit of an adventure getting to the dive shop: Le Centre de Loisirs in Les Goudes, Marseille -- we took 2 metro lines and 3 buses to get there!
We arrived very early, so our logical decision? Let’s hit the beach! Once again it was a nice beach. There was some trash floating in the water by the cove, but a few men were raking it out of the water, and throwing it away. Good for them.
We met up with the dive crew to get started. The crew spoke little English, so it was fun to go between translating and explaining dive stuff for Liz. We had 3 different pre-dive chats to explain what was going on. Twice in franglais- more French than English, then the last one in English - one of the staff divers spoke very good English, and was eager to teach us in English how to dive. He was later apologetic and surprised to learn I was an “Advanced Diver” and that I didn’t need the educational talk, but it was nice. We also met a few French people from Avignon who spoke decent English. Fun times on the boat with them. Reminded me of why I love divers so much- their easy to get along with and they’re a lot of fun.
The dive itself was fun. My guide was very nice- Jean Pierre. He showed me around the site, pointed out some shells and interesting fish behavior. I was fortunate enough in my trip abroad to Bermuda to be taught by a cephalopod expert (octopus, squid, cuttlefish) who taught us how to spot octopus, and I did!
After the dive we were on the boat headed back when they stopped the boat. The cause? A MOLA MOLA FISH! The guy I was talking to didn’t know the English name for it, only the scientific name. So what is it? The Ocean Sunfish. A prehistoric fish that has an interesting evolutionary history. And it’s technically considered plankton – it can’t swim against a current. So cool to actually see one.
Gros Bisous à Mola mola ;)
Lisa
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