Selling Half Shells

On a late September afternoon, I sat beneath a grape arbor on the shore of the Bay of Arcachon, discussing the sex life of the oyster with Dominique Aloir, who has been farming oysters in these parts for 37 years. It was low tide, and Aloir, tan and silver-haired at 59, had just sailed his little flat-bottomed boat in from his beds, waded ashore and hosed off his tall rubber boots. Then he had poured glasses of vin nouveau from a plastic water bottle.

I was in the Bassin d’Arcachon in the Aquitaine region of southwest France, 135 miles north of the Spanish border on the Atlantic coast. With four days to explore the bassin, or basin, meeting a longtime oyster farmer was high on my to-do list. This, after all, is Europe’s major oyster breeding site, with more than 4,000 seabeds worked by 1,000 farmers producing 20 million pounds of oysters each year for the tables of France, Spain and Ireland. No fewer than 20 oyster farming harbors dot the bay.

The bassin also is a resort area known to French, Germans and Britons, but to few Americans. It includes the town of Arcachon on the inland arm of the bay and, directly across the bay, jutting between it and the Atlantic, the 15-mile-long peninsula of Lege-Cap Ferret--not to be confused with the jet-setter destination of Cap Ferrat on the French Riviera. The area promotes itself as “a world apart,” which it is. It’s not for those seeking luxe accommodations and up-all-hours night life. It is, however, for nature lovers.

About 300 bird species have been spotted at the sanctuary in Le Teich, nine miles east of Arcachon. There, visitors can walk trails dotted with huts from which to spy many bird species migrating between Europe and North Africa. It is open year-round. Water sports abound around the basin, a major boating center and a popular port of call for sailors plying the Atlantic.

Arcachon, with its four miles of seafront, is no resort-come-lately. Its 4th century Roman inhabitants are thought to have enjoyed curative mud baths, and in the early 1800s it attracted the affluent who deemed saltwater bathing fashionable and medicinal. Today busy cafes line the long, wide waterfront promenade. Jetee Thiers is a popular spot for strolling and the main embarkation and debarkation point for ferries and sightseeing boats.

Nutrient-rich water and a mild climate (about 50 to 77 degrees) also have helped make the bay Europe’s major oyster breeding site. They say in these parts that the oyster -- naturally abundant in Roman times -- was the first inhabitant, and it remains ubiquitous in the basin. Oyster breeding, or ostreiculture, is the principal industry, generating $38 million annually. Everywhere one sees signs: “Ici Vente Directe Huitres” -- Oysters Sold Here Direct. Oysters on the half shell, eaten year-round, are on virtually every local menu.

On the day I visited with Aloir, he and his partner had just returned to the beds the young oysters they had collected the day before in metal mesh bags and brought ashore to be washed. Those oysters would continue to grow and be ready to eat in three months, just in time for Christmas.

The oyster farmer works “all year long, every day,” Aloir said, keeping his beds clean (the worst part of the job), placing the collectors for the eggs, separating the oysters with a hand tool, sorting them for size, selling them. That means no weekends off, no vacations. It’s a good living, he said, because “many people want to buy oysters,” but “the oyster farmer who doesn’t work a lot will not make it. I’m beginning to be tired. It’s hard on the back.”

Since the ‘70s, about two-thirds of the area’s oyster farmers have called it quits. Some, thinking it would be easy work, became disillusioned. And, Aloir said, “Sometimes the son doesn’t like to work like the father.”

The French recognize the importance of oyster farming to the basin and are vigilant about protecting this resource. Some things are beyond their control. One year the water was unusually cold and there were few baby oysters. In 1970 an epidemic wiped out the then-dominant species. And, as Aloir knows, “If there’s pollution in the bay, the oyster can’t stay alive. We were lucky with the oil spill.” After a huge oil tanker spill off Spain in 2002, locals were quick to barricade the bay, realizing that such a disaster could ruin the 150-year-old industry. Damage was limited, and local oysters were kept off the market for only 10 days.

At high tide, tall, crooked pinewood poles--pignots--poke out of the bay, making it resemble some strange de-timbered forest. They mark boundaries of oyster beds and protect young oysters by breaking up waves. Pignots also are convenient perches for the cormorants and other birds that call the bay home and are treasured and protected by residents of the basin.

Two little wood houses on pilings sit on the bay’s Ile aux Oiseaux (Bird Island), appearing at high tide to be anchored in water. Once, there were many of these structures, which are about the size of a small mountain cabin; they were lookouts for farmers protecting their beds from poachers. The two that survive are the area’s best-known man-made landmarks.

At La Maison de l’Huitre, the two-room oyster museum in the town of Gujan-Mestras, I learned that it takes three years of careful tending for an oyster to morph from egg to table treat and that the dominant species here is the Japanese Crassostrea gigas, brought in when the Portuguese oyster was killed by an epidemic. (This is a decidedly quirky oyster. Most are born male, become female and may revert to male. During their sexual flip-flops, they can release sperm or eggs, which are fertilized in the bay through what’s called “broadcast spawning.”) I also learned from museum director Veronique Damez that locals consider it “very strange” to cook oysters. They embellish raw ones with only a squeeze of lemon and perhaps a dash of shallot vinegar, and she seemed incredulous at the idea of eating them with cocktail sauce. “You put ketchup on oysters?” she asked.

I might as well have said I liked mine with pancake syrup.

Outside the museum, the air was decidedly brackish. Piled alongside the oyster shacks were the lime-coated collector tiles that farmers set in their oyster beds to collect the larvae. Six months later, the spat (baby oysters) are transferred to the mesh bags and placed back in the bay to mature.

Arcachon, a town of about 12,000, is only 38 miles southwest of Bordeaux by good roads and easily accessible by train, so it’s surprising that more Americans don’t come to take a look after touring Bordeaux’s vineyards. Only 450 Americans stopped by the Arcachon tourist office last year.

The town is not cloyingly stylish, which is part of its charm. The only one of Arcachon’s 28 hotels with four-star status -- in my view at least two stars too many -- is the rather depressing Arc-Hotel Sur Mer, which stands in faded splendor on the waterfront.

The hotel scene isn’t ideal, Yves Foulon, Arcachon’s personable 45-year-old mayor, acknowledged when we talked in his office in the 1879 town hall. He added that town planners are looking for suitable sites for a major player, and there have been talks with Holiday Inn. The newest hotel is the 3-year-old Novotel, which boasts a spa for thalassotherapy, a recently revived curative treatment involving swirling seawater baths -- very big in France.

Although Arcachon and the wooded Lege-Cap Ferret peninsula are but a 20-minute ferry ride apart, the ferry takes bicycles but no cars. And it runs only during the day, except in July and August, when service is extended to 7 p.m. The night I arrived, I’d have given a pretty euro for a car ferry or bridge. I’d flown from LAX to Paris, taken the TGV high-speed train at De Gaulle for the three-hour trip to Bordeaux and picked up a rental car. It was dusk, and I missed the Arcachon turnoff but thought I’d be OK if I followed the signs to Cap Ferret. I wound up on the wrong side of the bay and had to make the 44-mile drive to Arcachon in the dark.

Perhaps that was why I suggested later to his honor, Monsieur Foulon, that a bridge might be a good idea. “Impossible!” he replied, citing the threat to the environment posed by an invasion of cars. “The car is bad for people and bad for pollution.” But a really beautiful bridge? He frowned. “It’s concrete.”

I began to see his point when I retraced my route around the bay in daylight, enjoying every uncrowded mile. The road, sometimes two lanes, sometimes wider, threads through village after village with pretty little churches, town halls and flower-ringed roundabouts. The town of Ares, about halfway between Cap Ferret at the tip of the peninsula and Arcachon, boasts of being the only town in the world with an official landing strip for UFOs. It was created in 1976 at the instigation of a Bordeaux airport engineer who believed that UFOs would land more often if there were proper facilities. So far, no landings. The drive from Cap Ferret to Arcachon took about an hour, but during the more crowded summer it can take 90 minutes or more.

Though neighbors, the peninsula and Arcachon have vastly different personalities. With its tall buildings and bustling streets, Arcachon has a city ambience, while the peninsula’s towns are small and much of the region is bucolic.

This is Arcachon: the daily morning market next to town hall, where locals buy oysters, cheeses, sausages called crepinettes and foie gras. But this, too, is Arcachon: the Casino de la Plage in a turreted 1853 seaside chateau, where serious wining, dining and gambling take place upstairs above a floor dedicated to well-patronized slot machines.

That said, “glitz” is not a word one would associate with the Bassin d’Arcachon. The place is unassuming. In restaurants, waiters poured tap water, not even suggesting that I order the bottled variety. It’s not as precious as Provence. And when locals say “We are not the Cote d’Azur,” it’s a boast, not a complaint.

Robert Fleury, an 82-year-old retired pharmacist and former mayor, came to Arcachon as an infant and remembers horse-drawn wagons and lamplighters. To him, it’s still “a little town, a little family. During nine months we are alone. During three months we welcome many people.” So many -- as many as 100,000, including day-trippers -- that accommodations are hard to get.

As a child, Fleury lived in the Ville d’Hiver, or Winter Town, a verdant hillside enclave of villas established as a mid-19th century health resort. The developers, no slouches at PR, lured Napoleon III, the Empress Eugenie and the crown prince to launch it. Fleury’s parents, from central France, came like many others from France, England and Ireland to take the cure for tuberculosis, a treatment that included walks in the hills to inhale the pine-scented air.

The fanciful villas were built around a large park in which stood a casino, since destroyed by fire. Today there’s a 10-acre botanical garden where, on Sunday afternoons, elderly men play boules, a popular game similar to bowling, with small metal balls. The Arcachon tourism office has a printed walking guide to the Ville d’Hiver, where about 600 villas built between 1870 and 1930 have been preserved. Today they are upscale private homes, closed to the public. But the exteriors alone are a treat, an architectural feast of Swiss chalet, neo-Palladian and Anglo-Chinese, with bow windows, turrets, lacy wood carving, glass canopies and stained glass, with names such as Shakespeare, Mona Lisa and Amadeus.

On the southern outskirts of Arcachon is the seaside recreation area of Pereire, with a beach, seaside promenade and cycle track. Nearby, at Les Abatilles, mineral water flows from a deep spring discovered during drilling for oil in 1923. In summer, there are on-site tastings of the Abatilles label water.

Central Arcachon is, sadly, blighted by blocky 1970s buildings, some constructed before a height limit was in place. But there are pleasant places for strolling, such as the pedestrian shopping and dining street, Rue Marechal de Lattre de Tassigny, with its flower-decked lampposts.

Former mayor Fleury mentioned some of the famous who have passed time in what he considers “the prettiest little town in France” -- artists Claude Monet, Edouard Manet and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and composer Claude Debussy. He didn’t even mention Alexandre Dumas or the late French actress Sarah Bernhardt, who also reportedly spent time there.

The basin’s major visitor attraction, five miles south of Arcachon at La Teste de Buch, is the Dune du Pyla, the tallest sand dune in Europe -- 350 feet high, almost two miles long and, at its base, a third of a mile wide. A huge sand pile. There, on a drizzly afternoon, I climbed the 170 wooden steps, clutching the rope rail. The view of sea, coastline and forest from the top made it worth every step. I loved the nearby, quietly chic Pyla sur Mer, where, through the years, names such as Rothschild and Taittinger have been on the deeds of fancy vacation homes perched between forest and bay. Without a room reservation, I stopped on a whim--or was it the crowd in the attractive restaurant?--at Hotel Cote du Sud, whose basic motel exterior hides a charming interior with eight smartly appointed theme rooms. “Chambre Cubaine” was available, and dinner in the restaurant was one of the best meals of the trip. The other was at Le Patio in Arcachon.

Four days in the basin passed quickly. One day I drove south from Arcachon about three miles through forest and along the bay to Le Moulleau, where I had breakfast in one of the cafes on the renovated pedestrian promenade and later ate an ice cream on the pier and watched children playing on a cannon said to have been aimed at English ships prowling the coast in the 18th century.

I spent a day and night on the Lege-Cap Ferret peninsula, stopping first at the tourism office in the village of Claouey. Although I was warmly welcomed by director Pascale Lassus-Portarrieu when I drove up, she has no wish to make it easy for visitors to zip over from Arcachon in their cars. “It’s a fragile site,” she said, adding, “The traffic in all the bay is a problem. It’s awful in summer, the cars.” People love the peninsula, she added, because it’s “tres sauvage” -- very wild. I loved it for the same reason. As I drove the two-lane road that winds through stands of pine, I saw signs asking visitors to show respect for nature. There are dunes and forest, cycling tracks and footpaths.

The town of Cap Ferret sits near the tip of the peninsula, which has miles of sand beaches on its Atlantic side and, on its bay side, quaint oyster villages. As throughout the basin, the oyster rules on the peninsula, with tastings and music in July and August in the villages of L’Herbe and Le Canon. “You don’t have to speak the language” to join in, Portarrieu said. In season, local tourist offices will arrange visits with oyster farmers around the basin.

Lege-Cap Ferret hides its charms and its wealth behind walls and trees. Like Arcachon, its towns--with names such as Petit Piquey and Grand Piquey--attract only a sprinkling of Americans. Traditionally, the peninsula has been a safe haven for peace-seeking French celebrities such as Jean Cocteau, Jean-Paul Belmondo and Jean Marais.

For voyeuristic peeks at the lifestyles of the rich, the best bet is to take one of the sightseeing boats that leave year-round from Arcachon and in season from Lege-Cap Ferret. They skirt Bird Island and hug the bay shoreline with its vacation homes of wealthy French. The commentary is in French, but the scenery needs no translation.

The oyster farming village at L’Herbe is not to be missed. Whether you’re driving or biking, it’s a short turnoff from the main road. Oyster shells crunched underfoot as I strolled through the village, a cluster of narrow lanes with little wooden cottages with brightly painted doors and shutters. In season, one can sit by the sea and feast on a dozen oysters with bread and butter and a glass of wine for about $10. My knocks on the door of the balconied eight-room Hotel de la Plage roused no one, but I made a mental note to stay there one day. In the early 20th century, when resin tapping for turpentine and tar was a major industry in the basin, the hotel was a dining hall for laborers.

Cap Ferret’s town center has several good waterfront restaurants, including the casual l’Escale fish house. On the wide white beach at the tip of the cape, where ocean and bay meet at Pointe du Cap Ferret, stands a little green-and-white building. This is Chez Hortense, the cape’s most fashionable restaurant. If there is a place to see and be seen, this reputedly is it. (Alas, it was closed for the season when I stopped by.)

There are only 10 hotels and 14 bed-and-breakfasts on Lege-Cap Ferret, all small, and I was lucky to land at the 14-room Hotel des Pins with no reservation. The room was plain with a cramped bath, but the hotel has an inviting restaurant and garden, the staff is friendly, and it’s an easy walk into town. Weeks before leaving Los Angeles, I’d tried to book at the more chic La Maison du Bassin, but it was filled--and this was off-season. Private home rentals are popular in summer, when the peninsula’s 7,000 year-round residents are joined by 45,000 visitors.

When I think of the basin, I will remember sitting at Cafe Diego Plage on the esplanade at Arcachon in late afternoon with the delightful Lucie Lhermite of the Arcachon tourism office, sipping an espresso and watching the oyster boats returning from the beds. I’ll think of the red face of the waiter at a little cafe in town when I pointed out that my salad Nicoise was missing the tuna--and of how good-natured he was about my having interrupted his cigarette break. I’ll think about how real this place is, quick to welcome visitors but not another picture-perfect stage set created for tourists.

When I asked Mayor Foulon what his town has to offer American visitors, he spoke of the pleasures of strolling its small streets and dining in its neighborhood restaurants. He mentioned the unspoiled outdoors. And, he said, “Twenty-four hours spent in Arcachon is entirely different from 24 hours spent in the United States. The Winter Town is not Beverly Hills.”

And, of course, there are those oysters.

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GUIDEBOOK

Oysters in the Raw

Telephone numbers and prices: The country code for France is 33. The city code for Arcachon and environs is 5. All prices are in U.S. dollars. Room rates are for a double for one night. Meal prices are for a dinner entree. Menus are fixed-price meals of appetizer, entree and dessert.

Getting there: Air Tahiti Nui and Air France offer nonstop flights from LAX to Paris. United has direct flights (stop, no change of plane), and connecting flights (change of planes) are available on United, American, Continental, Lufthansa, Swiss, Delta, US Airways, KLM and Aer Lingus. From De Gaulle airport, take the TGV train for a three-hour ride to Bordeaux, where you can rent a car. Arcachon is about an hour’s drive.

Where to stay: Hotel Cote du Sud, 4 Ave. du Figuier, Pyla sur Mer; 56-832-500, fax 56-832-413, www.cote-du-sud.fr. Charming seaside boutique hotel with eight small but chic rooms, most with balconies. Excellent restaurant and sea-view dining terrace. Entrees $18 to $43. Menus from $27. Rate: from $75. Closed in January.

Hotel des Pins, 23 Rue des Fauvettes, Lege-Cap Ferret; 56-606-011, fax 56-606-741. Friendly beach-house ambience at 14-room hotel with restaurant. Room decor leans toward “basic summer camp,” but character abounds. Rate: from $68. Open April 1 to Nov. 12 and during Christmas holidays.

Where to eat: Le Patio, 10 Blvd. de la Plage, near Arcachon marina; 56- 83-02-72. Terrific food in nice surroundings, and no attitude at this “restaurant gastronominique.” Entrees from $19. Three-course prix fixe dinner for $35. Crab farci starters not to be missed.

Chez Yvette, 59 Blvd. du General Leclerc in town center; 56-83-05-11. Big, popular, long-established seafood restaurant. Oysters and more oysters -- it’s owned by an oyster farmer and his wife. Entrees from $19, menus from $22.

Cafe Diego Plage, 2 Blvd. Veyrier Montagneres; 56-83-84-46. Spanish ambience and menu at this attractive seafood restaurant with terrace on the waterfront in Arcachon. Entrees from $25, menus from $38.

For more information: Arcachon Tourism Office, Esplanade Georges Pompidou BP137, Arcachon 33120; 57-529-797, fax 57-529-777, www.arcachon.com.

Lege-Cap Ferret Tourism Office, 1 Ave. du General de Gaulle, Claouey 33950; 56-039-449, fax 57-703-170, www.lege-capferret.com.