We decided to drive to the sand Dune of Pilat an hour from Andernos in the Arcachon basin. It's 102 metres high, the tallest in Europe, and 4000 years old. A large area around the dune is preserved, no construction, no pollution, just non ending forests of pine trees and the wild ocean around, empty beaches. It's so peaceful and awesome it doesn't need many words, so here are just a few:
An engineer tried to stop the dune moving inland in the 18th century by planting pine trees. It worked, but the whole region was also covered in marshes and infected by Malaria. To dry those mashes required an awful lot of tree planting, which is very expensive. So with a stroke of genius, Napoleon III passed a law forcing landowners and local communities to plant millions of pines until 1914. The Landes region became then the largest artificial and industrial forest in Europe, with over a million hectares.
To clarify, Napoleon III is the nephew of the Waterloo Napoleon I, not the same dude. Until now, I had wrongly credited Napoleon I for this, my father would be ashamed.
Some of the forest burnt out this summer, climate change blah. Anyway, talking of environment, today the EU finally passed a law preventing the import of cocoa linked to deforestation. Several of us NGOs have been working to push for this and to tackle illegal cocoa for years, including REM and IDEF in Ivory Coast. One step forward, but everyone loves commitment and not action, I wish we had another Napoleon III to make shit happens.
Back to beauty while it's there, here's Didi's happiness in the Dune, having a blast for her 14th birthday!
She also enjoyed a good bum scratch from Cuong on the dune...
Almost back to the Sahara on some of these sunny duny landscapes, but sea on one side, forest on the other.
That was pure joy. Sigh. Back to the city.
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