This is an
article which I posted on my Ipernity account in April 2015. I have now left
Ipernity, gone back to Flickr, and on Flickr you cannot publish articles.
Therefore, as it is still, I hope, relevant and fun to read, I post it here,
knowing that my readers are fully bilingual… :o)
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For the last
couple of months, I have been planning a week-long trip down memory lane that
is now just about to begin...
At age 9, I
discovered what was to become “the sport of my life”, i.e., sailing. Every
summer, we would leave Paris and go down to the French Riviera to vacation for
a month in what was then a small village by the Mediterranean, called
Aiguebelle. During the summer of 1965, I started taking sailing lessons and
fell immediately in love with boats and navigation. Having no idea of the costs
involved, I sailed every day for several hours with my instructor, and I can
only suppose that, at the end of the vacation, there was quite a hefty bill to
foot.
The year after,
we stopped going to the French Riviera, and instead went to Club Med —which was
then still called by its full name of Club Méditerranée— because the practice
of sports was factored into the all-inclusive price, a pricing scheme which the
Club pioneered with the success that we know. And so, during the next 10 years
or so, we spent at least a month, and most years two months or two months and a
half (i.e., the full summer school vacation), in various Club Med “villages”
(read: resorts). I sailed every day, morning and afternoon, earned my stripes,
and at age 14, I became the Club’s youngest-ever sailing instructor. That
momentous (for me, if not for the rest of the world) event took place in the
village of Caprera, located on the eponymous island off Costa Smeralda in
Sardinia.
I was to return
to Caprera years later, as a grownup, and there I sailed again, as I did
whenever there was a sailboat and a body of water available, and then again the
next year, but this time on my own sailboat, and not as a customer of Club Med.
After that, Caprera and the many happy memories associated with it (as well as
with all the other Club Med villages I vacationed/worked at) slowly faded into
the past as I moved deeper into adulthood. When I was at University, I did a
lot of very serious, very high level competitive sailing on larger bluewater
racing boats, and of course the “little dinghy sailing” that one did at Club
Med was then way behind me, and when I started working as a lawyer in private
practice, first in New York, then in Paris, the amount of time allocated to
vacation diminished drastically. The carefree youth years I had been privileged
enough to enjoy were indeed gone.
My interest and
memories of those times were rekindled a couple of years ago when a website
about Club Med (collierbar.fr) asked me for a piece about “My summers at Club
Med”, in which I retold those past stories, albeit in a somewhat abridged
version. And very recently, at the beginning of 2015, some person from that
website asked me a question about that article and the old, faded photos I had
uploaded to illustrate it. It prompted me to do a quick bit of internet
research about Caprera today, and much to my surprise, I found out that the
village had been closed almost 10 years before and left “as is”. First, there
had been hopes of turning it into a high-end Club Med resort, but those hopes
were dashed by the preemption of the National Park that had been created in the
meantime and which included the village within its boundaries. Then, the Club’s
long-term lease was up and no one wanted to fund the restoration of the place
to its original condition, i.e.,
before the Club ever built its first structure there, in the late 1950s.
And so, this “ghost
village” continued to exist, still standing but deserted, silent but still full
of the laughter and joy of the thousands and thousands of people that had
vacationed there every year for half a century... Immediately, the proverbial
bulb lit up in my head: while the place still existed, while there was still
something to be photographed and recorded for future's memory, I simply had
to go and shoot it. It would be like walking down memory lane, with camera
in hand. I would go before the season, so I wouldn’t be bothered by inquisitive
eyes, and if it became necessary to do a bit of trespassing, I would do it, in
the interest of documenting the place “à la urbex”, for the collective memory,
as much as that can be expressed on the web today.
Since I made
that decision, I have been planning the trip carefully. I found more recent (or
not very old) photos, made contact with some people, and in general got
reassured about the fact that, even though officially closed off, the place was
still very much accessible, in a typically Italian way, because when there is
nothing of value inside, there’s not much point going to extremes to forbid
access... I assembled a photo kit based on prime lenses and covering all the
photographic needs I could anticipate... and now the time has come, as I will
be leaving home on Monday, and return after almost a week in Sardinia (with, of
course, other great places to go to and shoot, besides Caprera Island).
I will be doing
that trip alone, and of course the Caprera bit, which will come first, will be,
I’m sure, quite an emotional moment. I have tried to put together in my mind a “shooting
list” of must-have photos, but I will probably deviate from that well-planned
guideline once on site. The water will likely be too cold to take a full dip,
even for good times’ sake, but I might nevertheless go into the water, at least
waist-high, if only to take a few pictures of the beach and coastline
installations (or what’s left of them) from the sea. I also very much look
forward to walking through the old and abandoned village under the magnificent
pine trees that smelled so good and provided welcome shadow coverage during hot
summers, taking pictures of the washing stations, the Polynesian-style straw
huts, the former restaurant and kitchens, the bar and the adjoining
amphitheater, in summary all those elements that, in those days, made Club Med
such a unique and fun vacation place for a teenager —and, I suspect, for adults
as well.
Therefore, as
of Monday, April 27, I will perhaps not be able to connect to Ipernity as
usual. The hotels I've booked are of course equipped with internet wifi, but I
have no idea what the quality and speed of the connections will be. I hope I
will be able to bring back a few photographs that will do justice to the
wonderful memories I retain of those summers of my youth that were really
extraordinary times.
For those
of you who can read French and are interested in reading my original account of
“My summers at Club Med”, the original article is still online here:
… and the
account of my visit, together with photos, is here (in French as well, of
course):
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