A Visit to the Pont du Garde, 2000, by Andrew Dunn et al.

From MemoryArchive

Who:  Andrew Dunn, Logan Hughes, Jay Harbison, Will Tate
What: Adventure
When: June 2000
Where: Southern France

About a week and a half into our France/Italy trip the summer after my junior year of high school, we had left Nice and were driving around, visiting a few towns of the Provence region in the South of the country.

As a group of students who were required to take Latin in our early years of high-school, a large part of the trip was spent visiting different sites built by the ancient Romans. I remember playing the football game "500" and a group photo of us balancing on posts outside of the amphitheater in Oranges. I also recall visiting another amphitheater in Nimes that was used in a Jean Claude Van Damme movie and trying to slurp up my melting gelato-cone before we were allowed inside.

While these sites were indeed interesting, being 17 years old meant that we were more interested in running around, sneaking beer into our hotel rooms, and flirting with the girls than soaking up facts about the ancient culture that surrounded us. In fact I remember more about how we used each of the ancient ruins as our playgrounds than about what they actually were or represented. In Ostia Antica, right outside of Rome, we went spelunking in some old tunnels and ran away from the creepy gardener that we were sure was chasing us on his giant, large-bladed tractor.Overall the best of these ancient playgrounds, was also the most impressive, a great structure displaying the height of ancient technological achievement; the Pont du Gard.

When we got off the bus in the dusty parking lot, filled, like that of all other tourist atractions, with tour buses, mini-vans, and socks-and-sandals-wearing German tourists, it was intensely hot and I doubt many of us were not hung over as the night before had been our last night in Nice (an obvious reason for revelry.) I remember feeling a bit guilty that my parents had paid for me to come and visit all of these marvelous, ancient attractions and all I wanted to do was make it to the next hotel so I could open a bottle of wine and go sit by the pool that we had been promised was awaiting us. However this little excursion off of the path to another inebriated night with my peers, turned out to be one of the most memorable moments of the our trip and, probably thankfully, the most exciting. (Climbing across Parisienne rooftops to break into my hotel room, however is a close second.)

From the parking lot we followed a dusty road down to the Pont du Garde, which even with my preoccupation with partying, I admitted to myself was quite impressive. As I got closer and the path began to lead down a small hill, a gorgeous, crystal clear river came into view and the impressiveness of the structure gave way to inspiration. "We're going off of that," I said to one of my buddies who immediately expressed his consent and delight.

But to our disappointment, we couldn't actually walk on the pont du garde itself. Rather a new "pont" with railings had been erected for tourists to cross and look at the structure. Although saddened that we couldn't take a plunge into glory off of a 2000 year old aqueduct, we quickly found a solution that although not as impressive was sure to win us daring/cool points with all of the females, and awe/respect from the males.

The bridge, naturally, led to the other side of the river. However, unlike its counterpart which constituted a gradual slope into the water, the opposite bank was composed of sandstone cliffs about 30 feet high the tops of which were shrouded with large shrubs and small evergree trees. When we reached the other side, about four of us disappeared into the underbrush where we found a place to deposit our shirts and shoes and proceeded to survey our challenge.

As we looked over the edge, we began to realized the minor potential flaw in our plan... No one knew how deep the water was and with a thirty foot fall we didn't want to find out that it was only 6 or 7 feet deep after facing our fears. So we stood there, guessing and posturing, each of us making estimations about the probability of succcess or death based on not much but the fact that we had all jumped off of similar cliffs, just not into water with an unknow depth.

As we debated, along came our reason to jump. A kayaker and his buddy were paddling by below us. Armed with a few years of French, and at least two honor students, we managed to get the kayaker to stick his double bladed paddle as deep as he could into the water; testing the depths. The simple "rien" that he shouted back, met our ears, and I guess we decided to go for it.

We knew it couldn't be less than 7 or 8 feet and if the bottom was sandy, like the other side, then really, what could be the danger? Lucky for the rest of us, there was one kid who just decided to go.

So Will jumped, and we held our breath as he plumetted towards the water, disappeared, and finally, to our relief, re-surfaced with a resounding"woohoo!" While this was reassuring to the rest of us, the loud splash followed by a war whoop drew the attention of everyone who had been standing on the bridge, looking at the aqueduct.

At this point there was no turning back. I'm not sure which girl I was trying to hit on at that point in the trip, but I'm sure she was on the bridge. So were our professors and a bunch of Frenchmen shouting "Allez! Allez!" So of course not one to disappoint the international community or the ladies, or to miss an opportunity to openly defy authority, I went next, followed Jay and Logan.

What a feeling! It was so hot outside and the water was so cool, and the Frenchmen were cheering, and the girls were screaming and our teachers were frowning. Ultimate satisfaction of that sort is infrequent at best and of course I wanted more.

We all swam to the nearest bank where it appeared we could ascend the embankment and repeat our performace all over again. We climbed up the sandy slope and emerged at the top. Laughing and covered in dusty mud we began to make our way back to the jumping point. As we got close to the edge again, a blue-clad figure popped out from behind one of the hedges. "Ne se jetez pas!!! NON NON NON Ne se jetez pas! was all I heard before I realized that the blue-clad man was a gendarme, and that he was yelling "Don't jump....no no no don't jump" at the top of his lungs.

At this point our once super-human bravery melted into impotent fear. Since we were most likely already in trouble with the teachers, I quickly decided that adding an angry policeman into the mix could only increase the backlash from our brazen stunt. All group cohesion deteriorated as we all scrambled around the policeman to grab our shirts and shoes before running back out of the undergrowth and into the hopeful anonymity of a crowd of tourists.

Thankfully, the cop did not pursue, at least not with much effort, and we escaped to the other side of the bridge where we met up with some (obviously) swooning females, then finished the two hour stay with swimming from the lower bank and jumping off smaller rocks. I don't recall any retaliation from the teachers. Logan and I were already in trouble, but I guess since we signed a waiver and hadn't broken any technical rules, they decided not to do anything about it.

That afternoon we arrived at our Best Western hotel outside of Oranges, and Jay and I got drunk on warm "Strong Ales" we had stashed in our luggage.