When I told Luc that I am going for a conference at CIRM in Marseilles, he sent me a paper written in memorial of a math student who died there many years ago. The cause of death is falling from the "calanques". When I actually arrived there and saw calanques with my own eyes, I realized that although hiking there means plenty of opportunities of sudden death. As a safety measure, I drunk a lot of coffee before going on hikes.
Some of my colleagues went swimming. But I found it very irrational to take the risk of hypothermia to dip your body in the sea late October (unless you are in Australia). The only time when I was actually tempted to give it a try, we found some yellow jelly fish in the water. We should have just gone to a swimming pool.
Two more things about Marseilles:
The afternoon when we arrived, there was a football match and the bus we should take was canceled. So we took a uber instead. When we got close to the stadium, I heard firecracker and thought "isn't it too early for firework?" Soon I realized the sound I heard was riot police shooting tear gas at football fans on the street. Our driver calmly honked and both the riot police and fans very politely gave us a way to pass. Very civilized country!
One night on the way back from hiking, I heard something like a pig moving in the bushes, probably a wild boar. I tried to speak loudly to scare it away, but apparently it got angry moved towards me. I ran at maximum speed for 10 minutes until I could not hear it anymore. The moral of this story is -- 1. French people seem to don't like to eat wild boars. 2 Jogging may save your life one day.
