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Sunday, July 10, 2011

The Cordouan Lighthouse is 400 Years Old this year!

Where we have been staying much of the time here in France is in a village called St. Palais sur Mer, on the Atlantic coast not too far from La Rochelle.  Looking out from the house you can see a very cool and very old lighthouse called Le Phare de Cordouan. 

Here is a link to the Wikipedia entry describing it: Corduan Lighthouse

It is the oldest lighthouse in France and the tenth tallest "traditional lighthouse" in the world.   And this year it is 400 years old!
















We were invited to go out to the lighthouse for the celebration that was held only for boaters.  It was really spectacular.  All the boats gathered around the lighthouse at low tide when the sandbar is exposed around the lighthouse then we ferried back and forth to the sandbar on little zodiac motor boats.  Once we were there we spent the afternoon watching entertainment that had been arranged for the event-jugglers, acrobats and even a team of parachutists who landed on to the sand bar.  Very impressive!  The fête included free food & wine from the region for all of us who made the trip out to celebrate.  The grande finale of the event was an aerial video made of the event where we were all herded onto the sand bar to form the number "400" when seen from the air.  I never got to see the result of the shoot until now, when I searched for it and found the video on a French news site.  For those of your who speak French or are in the process of learning it for the Peace Corps, I have attached the link to the video here.  Our "video art" where we make the 400 is right at the end, so if you don't speak French feel free to jump ahead:

Le phare de Cordouan fête ses 400 ans

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