The journey that changed everything.
The first trip
At 18, boarding at school, I was close friends with Hélène, the daughter of a curator at the temple of Angkor. She invited me to come to Thailand. I took a plane, alone, for the first time, to Asia. It was love at first sight: the light, the smells, the gentleness of the people, the food, a way of being I had never encountered before. The following year, I wanted to go further. By chance, I came across a guidebook on Indonesia. Bali: the beaches, the coconut trees, the surfing (I was a fan of board sports and still am). I was 19. I put down my bags.
The three summers that followed, I criss-crossed the archipelago – the Celebes, Borneo, Java – always coming back to Bali as my home base. What I found there wasn’t just the beauty of the landscapes. It was the kindness of the people, their philosophy, their smiles, their respect for nature, animals, the sun, the sea. In Indonesia, you are welcomed differently. I never got over it.
Travelling without taking a plane
When I took over Esterel Caravaning in 1996, the site was one hundred percent Provençal: beautiful, authentic, but with no surprises, no sense of escape. I then made a decision that might seem strange for a campsite in the Var: to open it up to the exotic. Not to erase what it was, but to enrich it with the wider world.
The idea was simple. Not everyone can, or wants to, fly to the other side of the world. But everyone wants to dream, to be surprised, to lay eyes on something unexpected. Sixty minutes from home, or simply by arriving here, you can travel. Travel through my travels, in a sense.
The estate is thus dotted with 86 Buddha statues imported from Indonesia, placed here for peace, serenity, and that sense of the exotic. The restaurant opens through solid teak doors – former doors of a Toraja house. Early on, I also had the first palm trees planted at Esterel Caravaning. Today there are nearly a thousand.
Lush nature
What I love about Bali is also its overflowing nature. Lush, exuberant, in bloom to excess. When I return to Indonesia, I rediscover what I am trying to build in the Var: that living, generous backdrop that beautifies and surprises at every turn.
Here, we create it. In Bali, it is natural. But the feeling is the same. I will stop planting the day Esterel Caravaning becomes one enormous bouquet of flowers.
Between us: The stone guardians
If you have ever wondered where the 86 Buddha statues scattered around the campsite come from, here is the answer. They all come from the same place: a stonemason located about thirty minutes from Seminyak, in Bali, along a road lined with statue sellers and workshops below. The stone is volcanic, soft, easy to carve, alive. I have been going back for years, always to the same craftsman. One of the last. The others have nearly all closed: “It’s completely out of fashion,” they say.
In Indonesia, everyone has a statue and a small temple for offerings. Not for the gods – for the monsters! The monsters eat the offerings and, once satisfied, they don’t attack the house.
The statues didn’t all arrive at once. They travelled at the pace of shipping containers, slipped between teak furniture and rolls of fabric, because a container holds a maximum of 22 tonnes, and volcanic stone is the ideal ally for optimising weight without wasting a single cubic centimetre.
– Aurore
