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A secret garden on the sea
Port-Cros, the "Secretive", is the smallest of the three Stoechades. Eight miles from the coast, the island park forms an archipelago with the other park islands of Bagaud, Rascas, and Gabinière. This land encircled by a strip of sea accessible only to "clean" boats is the premiere island and sea park in the Mediterranean.
In the Great Channel, the small isle of Bagaud (domain of the black rat) is, along with the rocks of Rascas and La Gabinière, one of the three Integral Nature Reserves of Port-Cros. 
Even from offshore it retains its sixty hectares of wooded mystery.
Rounding its southern tip to return to Port-Cros Bay, the southwestern channel leads to the cove Fausse Monnaie (lit. "counterfeit money")—a name that awakens the imagination. Then you arrive in the small port (seventy-five quay berths, forty-two moorings). There are no problems with respect to draughts: the origin of the name Port-Cros refers to its depth ("port creux" literally means "deep port"). In the past, berthing could be perilous in rough seas, but it has now been made easier by raising the dock.
Next to the port, the pastel pink and yellow houses and palm trees soften the dark mass of the forest covering 500 of the island's 650 hectares.
Including the park rangers, Port-Cros counts at most fifty permanent residents, whose business is in part tied to tourism, with one hotel, five restaurants, a souvenir shop, and the diving club. There is also a church and a school, which has fewer than ten students in a single classroom.
While the village has had running water since the 1960s, there is no street lighting. Hence, it is worth staying for a whole night, after the visitors—up to 3,000 per day—have re-embarked. Mooring is mostly forbidden in the 1,200 hectares of the sea around the site, but it is fully authorised in Port-Man Bay.
Bicycles are not allowed when travelling to the three very busy small swimming beaches a half-hour from the village: La Palud to the north, the South Beach ("plage du Sud") to the southwest, and Port-Man to the east.
The exceptional environment and the interpretive paths laid out by the Touring Club offer other joys, both to the skilled hiker and those simply curious. A three-hour walk invites one onto the ridgeline path. Daydreamers and those with weaker legs can choose a one-hour route towards the small Valley of Solitude or a forty-five minute course devoted to the flora and the forest.
After all, Port-Cros is no mere rock. On the ancient metamorphic rocks of gneiss and mica schists that are the foundation of the archipelago, the vegetation is very dense, undoubtedly due to the springs. Scrub, Aleppo pines, holm oaks, wild olive trees, strawberry trees, Carpobrotus acinaciformis, and other stoechas plants (catnip) offer their fragrances, mingled with the many species of protected birds—such as the extremely rare shearwater, a nesting bird that makes Port-Cros its only domain.
On the side facing the sea, Port-Cros is ranked as one of the Top Forty most beautiful diving sites in the world. To put it more modestly, take along a mask and a snorkel to follow the thirty- to forty-minute underwater swimming trail: grouper, barracuda, rainbow wrasse, and masses of salema all graze on the posidonia bed that can extend up to forty m deep.
The Park House ("Maison du Parc") that substitutes for the Harbourmaster's Office can give you information on these visits and offers a fascinating exhibit at the Fort de l'Estissac on the marine and underwater environments, which the Aquascope will complement.
The conservation mission also extends to its military heritage. The Park offers a fort tour of Moulin, Estissac, Eminence, Port-Man, and Vigie, with some more restored than others. It is a way for you to enter the island's history, conquered a thousand times over and austerely protected.
- Djinn Naigeon
