Provence

Recently, my father came out for a visit. Although he was not able to stay long (he felt compelled to return to San Diego so as not to have more than one unexcused absence at his community college Latin class), I was able to take some time off of work and the two of us were able to take a very enjoyable and interesting trip to southern France. We spent a little less than a week visiting Arles, Nîmes, and elsewhere in Provence. We decided on these towns for a couple of reasons: first, it was early April and we were hoping that the further south we went the better the weather would be, and second, that region of France has a significant number of important Roman ruins that have survived the last two thousand years in excellent condition. Although the weather was not particularly great, the ruins were certainly impressive and the trip was a resounding success. Here are some photos, with commentary:

We rented a car in Lausanne, then with the assistance of a GPS borrowed from Jens, drove to Arles. Driving in France is expensive: from Geneva to Valence -- a distance of about 250 km (150 mi) -- there is a toll of 29.50 Euro ($40). After that, you get a series of smaller but more frequent tolls, the end result being that you pay about twice in tolls what you pay in gas. Anyway, once we got to Arles, we were totally at the mercy of the GPS as we only had a street address and no idea how to actually get to our hotel. Pretty quickly, we found ourselves driving through the medieval center of the town, driving on roads not significantly wider than our car. At some point, you had to just trust that the GPS knew what it was doing and that -- despite all appearances -- the "roads" we were on were actually meant for cars and that we were not cruising along on sidewalks. The above photo shows one of the "roads" we ended up on. To make a left turn off of that street, which was necessary to get to the hotel, you had to do it in two parts, i.e. turn left, then back up a bit, then complete the turn. Ultimately, everything worked out OK as we found our hotel, parked the car, and didn't drive the wrong way down any one way streets, but I would definitely put it in my top ten most stressful driving experiences list.


Arles is a really ancient city, and evidence of this fact is literally everywhere, as shown in the above photo. Most of the building (not pictured) was fairly modern looking -- maybe a hundred or two hundred years old -- yet for some reason, they had retained this very ancient looking marble column as part of the building. But, instead of building it into the newer building, they just sort of left it leaning against the corner almost as an afterthought. Pretty much the entire city looks like this: bits from this century, that century, this millennium, that millennium, etc.

One of the big attractions in Arles is the largely-still-intact Roman amphitheatre. This is a view from the top of the amphitheatre, looking across the city into the stormy weather that seemed to follow us around Provence.

Very interestingly, the reason why the amphitheatre in Arles (and the amphiteatre in Nîmes, and the theatre in Orange and many other Roman buildings) survived for so long was that it was in essentially constant use since it was built. After the fall of the Roman empire, the amphitheatre lost its original purpose of housing sporting and gladiatorial events and by the middle ages, it became a sort of walled city within a city, complete with defensive towers on the outside and churches and markets on the inside. I can't remember the exact numbers, but there were something like 150 houses inside the amphitheatre when, in the 19th century, it was decided to clear out the amphitheatre and return it to its classical condition.

The other well-preserved Roman site in Arles is the theatre, not far from the amphitheatre. Nowadays, both it and the amphitheatre are used for public events.

Although this time around our rental car was a VW Golf, I know exactly what to ask for next time.

Our next stop was in beautiful Nîmes, which was once an important Roman city and thus contains an incredible Roman amphiteatre, pictured above (next to my Dad). The helpful audioguide mentioned that, impressive as this amphiteatre is, it was probably only one of the top twenty largest ones built by the Romans. One of the top twenty! I'm not sure why, but I really find it almost impossible to imagine that the Roman Empire was so large and so powerful and so wealthy that they built roughly twenty amphitheatres this large! Incredible.

The interior of the amphitheatre. Like the one in Arles, the amphitheatre housed a mini city for most of the middle ages and now that the dark ages are over, it is used as a place to bloodily and gruesomely slaughter helpless animals. Isn't progress great?

The top of the amphiteatre in Nîmes.

The official symbol of the city, since ancient times, is a crocodile chained to a palm tree. The history behind this is pretty cool (see the wikipedia link above) and the end result is even cooler: there are crocodiles and or palm trees decorating most of the streets downtown and most of the public places.

Nowadays, Nîmes is probably most famous for two things: being the source of the word denim and being nearby the absolutely incredible Pont du Gard. The Pont du Gard is part of an ancient aqueduct that was built to bring water from Uzès to Nîmes (a distance of more than 30 miles) and is an absolute marvel of engineering. The water flows "downhill" from Uzès but the gradient is so slight that it is impossible to see with the naked eye -- over the entire 31 miles, it drops only 55 ft. This corresponds to 1 ft of descent for every 3000 ft of travel. Awesome.

One evening, we had dinner at the house of a friend of the family. The above photo is a French minitel that I found in the house. The minitel is a small phone/computer terminal first used in the early 1980s as a sort of proto-internet: people could look up phone numbers, check train schedules, buy movie tickets, and do other Compuserve-esque things. The minitel above is a pretty late model, probably from the 90s, I'm guessing. For me, this was a big deal as I had never seen one in the wild. I remember that my high school French book had a small article about how awesome minitels were and how they were so much better than anything we had in the US and how it was proof that France was just a much more connected place than the US could ever dream of being. Of course, nowadays, most minitels (this one included) sit in the corner and gather dust, only being used as a phone as they have been made redundant by the ubiquity of the modern PC. Anyway, I thought it was cool.


Not far from Arles is Les Baux de Provence, a one-time medieval stronghold that is now a bunch of awesome ruins on the top of some decaying limestone cliffs. Les Baux is a fascinating place and totally worth a visit for anyone in the neighborhood, the above photo is of one of the instructional posters around the site. I guess the poster is trying to illustrate the idea that this point was the ideal place for the residents of Les Baux to discard unwanted guests, but I'd like to think of it as an illustration of the world's earliest extreme athlete. Can't you just imagine him screaming out "Do the Dew"!?

One more aqueduct. This one, though, is not particularly famous. It is ancient and Roman and used to serve Arles, but other than that, it's not particularly famous. It doesn't have any (surviving) huge spans or anything -- it's not more than 15 or 20 ft tall -- and what's left of it just sort of rambles along the countryside. I thought that it was pretty cool that you could actually buy a house that was right next to ruins that are nearly 2000 years old!!! Also, as far as I could tell, there were a lot of small signs leading to this aqueduct (just saying "aqueduct," oddly enough), yet for the life of us we couldn't find a parking lot or a little information center or anything and ended up just pulling our car over on the shoulder of the road and hopping out to look around. To me, this is something almost impossible to imagine. I mean, there are so many awesome, 2000-year-old things in France that they cannot be bothered to make parking lots or signs for all of them. Like, only the important 2000-year-old things have signs. Crazy.

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After France, we headed back to Switzerland for a couple days of hanging out and such (there will be another blog post about this, and it will rule -ed).

Always thinking ahead, my father remembered to bring both of our baseball gloves with him in his luggage so that we could partake in that most American of traditions, playing catch. A note about vocabulary here: in the movie Field of Dreams, in a very poignant scene at the end of the film, Kevin Costner asks his Dad -- well the ghost sort of thing of his Dad, at least -- if he wants to play catch. Since the movie was written and directed by people who had only vaguely heard of baseball (this is evident throughout), Costner asks his Dad if he "would like to have a catch." This is wrong, wrong, wrong. It is so wrong, in fact, that since that movie came out, my father and I have jokingly referred to playing catch as "having a catch" just to emphasize how stupid the phrase is and also to enjoy our own private joke. Anyway, as part of a tradition that goes all the way back to the Boboli Gardens in Florence in 2000, my father and I had a catch in the Parc de Valancy in Lausanne. The above photo was taken afterwords, which explains why you don't see all the Swiss girls who were totally checking us out and being intrigued by our strange foreign customs.

Finally, here we are at Parc Montbenon, near my apartment, wearing our matching hats. Yes, we had matching hats. I know -- we rule.

Ski Season

It is wintertime in Switzerland, which means that it is ski time in Switzerland. Fortunately, there has been a lot of snow the last few weeks which means that the skiing is good and even total bums like me can go out and have fun. It is my aim that before I leave this country I will have advanced to the level of "mediocre" skier, no matter how much pain, suffering and freezing weather that involves. So far, there hasn't been too much of any of that bad stuff, but then again, my advancement hasn't progressed very far.

Right after the New Year, my labmate Jens had an apartment in the mountains reserved for a week of skiing with his girlfriend and some friends of theirs that would be visiting. Due to some last-minute changes of plan, a space opened up in the apartment and I was invited to join Jens and his friends for a couple days of skiing. As I had stayed in the US until after the New Year, I basically got off the plane here in Switzerland, unpacked my bags from the US, packed my bags for skiing, slept for 5 hours, then got on a train to meet up with Jens and his friends. It would be an understatement to call it an adjustment for me to leave California, where it was warm and sunny, and then the next day to be in the middle of snow with temperatures in the teens and 20s. It was gorgeous, though.

Fig. 1: The view from the apartment in Valais.

With the new year came an (almost) all new Paul.

Fig. 2: The New Paul features all new skis (sorry Swiss Army), goggles, and a helmet for safety. He still has the same vintage ski poles and totally inappropriate pants (I think Soph bought these for a camping trip eons ago and then gave them to me because they didn't fit). Pictured with the New Paul from left to right, Jens, Matt and Jackie (Jens's friends from U Michigan).

I got to spend three days straight skiing "beginner" slopes with 9-year-olds, and by the last day I was able to do some of the same pistes as normal-sized human beings. It actually did feel like quite a transformation: when I started, I was timid, nervous, and constantly hitting the breaks so that I wouldn't go too fast. By the end, I felt confident skiing on decently steep slopes and I generally tried to go as fast as possible. I honestly believed that I had improved to a not totally shameful level of proficiency. Oh, how foolish I was.

Hot off of my success with Jens and his friends, I decided to agree to go skiing with Serge a couple of weekends ago. First, he wanted me to go with him and some visitors from out of town to a nearby resort, which sounded like a great plan to me. Then, the plan changed -- the visitors weren't coming and instead we would go to somewhere nearer to Geneva. Then, the plan changed from "downhill, fun, casual skiing" to "monstrous, uphill, death-march skiing" in the mountains with mountain man Bernard as the guide. I think I have adequately documented my previous misadventures with ski de randonée or peau de phoque as it is known. If I were sane, I would have ditched as soon as the plan changed from "downhill" to "uphill," but much as Icarus , filled with hubris, decided to fly too close to the sun, I decided to test my new skills in the most difficult possible circumstances.

Fig. 3: Jens showing off the peau de phoque.

When we started, it was cold and snowing. Although I thought I would die in the parking lot, by the time we got started, I was so hot that I had unzipped my jacket and taken off my helmet and gloves. Skiing uphill is really hard work, but similar to a nice mountain hike, its not too hard to get into a rhythm and actually start to enjoy the views which are usually pretty stunning. After a few minutes, I heard Bernard say, "Watch out. Try not to get your skis or boots wet, they'll freeze." We had come across a creek in the forest and the only way across was to balance delicately on snow-covered rocks. Anyone who has ever been hiking with me will know that creeks are my nemesis and rarely to I cross a small stream without accidentally dipping a boot or two into the water. My first attempt in the snow was not much more successful than one might expect.

Fig. 4: Crossing a creek with skis on is about as easy as it looks.

After a couple of hours, we decided to take a break. "Break" here is a relative term -- as there is generally very little surrounding you that isn't covered in a think, powdery layer of snow, there isn't really anywhere to sit. So, you just stand on your skis and try not to think about how tired you are. As we had stopped a couple hundred yards uphill from the nearest cluster of cabins, we didn't really expect any company on our break. Thus, it was somewhat of a surprise when we saw that we had a visitor.

Fig. 5: Mountain Kitty! Although she probably belonged to a chalet out of sight and down the hill, I'd like to believe that she was a wild cat, living off of her cunning, guile, and the frozen corpses of other skiers.

As the cat was super friendly, we all had a good time feeding it bits of dried fruit, watching it try to "ambush" our skis, and of course having it climb all over us.

Fig. 6: I guess it's pretty cliché to take a picture of yourself in the mountains in the middle of nowhere with a cat on your shoulder, but I just couldn't resist the temptation.

As you can almost see in the above photo, by the afternoon the snow had stopped and the weather was fantastic. Hiking (especially in the US), it's not so hard to get to places where you literally can't see any signs of civilization, but it really is a whole new level of pristine isolation when you can't see any signs of civilization and everything is covered with thick snow. This really is the one advantage of ski de randonée that cannot be matched by any other activity.

Fig. 7: Although technically you could still see a ski lift on the mountains behind us, I think this was about as far from civilization as I have been, here in Europe.

Of course, it was not all uphill skiing. For the other people in our group, the real highlight was the return trip -- downhill skiing on thick, untouched powder. I had been warned that skiing on thick powder was more difficult than skiing on manicured pistes at ski resorts, but (again) I figured that I was good enough now that I would be up to any challenge. This did not turn out to be the case.

First, I didn't account for the fact that I was extremely tired before I even began. After hours of climbing, my legs were tired and I had developed huge blisters on my heels. I found out fairly quickly that I could barely lift my right leg, which made turning on my left ski pretty much impossible. Second, not only was the snow powdery and thick, it was extremely varied. Every once in a while, you would hit a relatively hard part or a extra powdery bump and if you lost your balance -- wham. Finally, I was totally unprepared for the fact that if you went too slowly, you would sink into the powder and thus have basically no chance of staying on your skis when you tried to turn.

So, my attempt to go downhill went pretty much like this: Stop, go fast, crash, pick yourself up, repeat. The snow was so thick that when you fell it was like landing on a giant pile of freezing cold pillows, so it wasn't too painful, but it got to be pretty embarrassing after about the 20th fall. Every once in a while, though, I would actually manage to stay on my feet and make a really cool, cutting turn, producing a wave of snow. It was like being the star of one of those "Ski Utah!" commercials, at least until I inevitably ate it ten feet down the slope.

Fig. 8: It is fairly easy to identify me in the picture above -- I'm the one covered in snow. As you can see, I am getting ready to make a turn onto my left ski, which means that much more snow is in my near future.

The end result was that all of the confidence and pride that I had built up in my previous ski trip was totally and utterly destroyed by the end of this one. I reached the bottom a bitter, broken man and for the third time in my life I swore that I would never go on another ski de randonée for the rest of my life.

Technically, it is on the "forbidden" list, but ...

Here's the deal: everyone here skis. Unlike in the US, where skiing is (rightly) seen as an effete, elitist pastime for the aristocracy, skiing in Switzerland is part of the national identity and thus enjoyed by everyone. By the time they can walk, most Swiss are expert skiers (see previous posts on this topic) and it isn't uncommon for people to go skiing nearly every weekend from December to March. This year, we've had an exceptionally heavy snowfall, so conditions are excellent.

The incredible popularity of skiing here has a number of both positive and negative consequences. First, it means that going skiing is not very expensive; by Swiss standards, it is downright cheap. Although there are some big name resorts (Verbier, Zermatt, Gstaad) that cater to Russian petro-billionaires, the vast majority are small, family-friendly, and affordable. Second, the skiing is very close by. From my apartment, I could be on the piste in less than 2 hours, using only public transportation. In a lot of places, narrow-gauge trains run virtually to the top of the slope. Finally, there are tons of options. If you were to go for only a single day, you could probably choose from a half dozen places. If you were willing to make a longer trip and stay a night, you could choose from dozens. There is no end to the variety.

The only major negative consequence of skiing's popularity is that people who don't know how to ski (like me) will find themselves lonely and bored all winter long.

As mentioned in a previous post, my mother has great concerns about me going skiing. Most of this is due to typical, unfounded, maternal worrying, but there is a real grain of truth here, as well. As many of you, my dear readers, know, I have on one other occasion (before my arrival here in Switzerland) attempted to go skiing. It wasn't a great experience. There was crashing, bruising, broken bindings, getting lost, wandering down the wrong mountain, waiting for hours for a bus that didn't come, finally borrowing money to get on a bus that actually did come, and well, in summary, I did not exactly bathe myself in glory. Thus, it was with great hesitation that I decided to go against my dear mother's wishes and once again throw myself on the mercy of the pistes. I figure, if I can't learn to safely and enjoyable ski in Switzerland, where can I learn?

The biggest hurdle to learning how to ski is equipment. Renting gets expensive very quickly, and it just doesn't make sense to shell out hundreds of dollars for equipment that you may not use more than a couple times. Of course, there is a third option ...

The Arsenal in Morges -- a half-hour down the lakefront from Lausanne -- was some sort of castle or fort back in the day, but is now the home of the Army Liq Shop, your one-stop spot for all your Swiss Army surplus gear. In addition to tents, tables, crates, gunny sacks, and clothing, you can also purchase slightly used skis. As the army uses these for mountain training, they are configured for ski de randonée (off-trail, uphill skiing) and thus come with fancy bindings and a set of peaux de phoque. The kit includes the skis, ski poles, bindings, and peaux de phoque for the ridiculously low price of 30 CHF. That's like $27 for pretty much everything you need to ski, minus the boots.

Fig. 1: Swiss Army skis and poles. No, the skis and poles do not fold up and fit in your pocket.

As you can see from the picture, the skis are in good shape. The bindings are a little bit worn, but mechanically, everything is great. Stylistically, well, the skis are a bit unusual. They are heavier and thicker than most downhill skis and they aren't curved like newer skis, which means that if I can learn to ski on these, any other skis would be a breeze. The boots were the cheapest pair I could find that came in my size at the local sporting good store. Even still, they are a huge improvement over the rental pair I had for the trip to Grand St. Bernard, which I guess tells you the importance of a comfortable fit. As for the poles (or batons as they are called here), well, let's just say that they drew a lot of attention on the pistes.

Fig. 2: Modern ski poles are made out of advanced carbon fiber polymers and titanium. These are made out of 100% SEXY.

This style of ski pole hasn't been popular for downhill skiers in 30 years, which means that I am either way behind the times or way ahead of them. A lot of people gave them kinda funny looks and a couple of the employees at the ski resort asked questions about them, so they were clearly the star of the show. Based on all the attention, you can mark my words now: these will be the batons to have next ski season.

Gear purchased, a few of us headed to Lelex in France (very near CERN and Geneva) for an afternoon of skiing on Saturday. Although at first, I started on the bunny hill (technically, I think it was a "ducky hill" as there was a giant inflatable duck at the bottom), by the end of the afternoon, I had skied a small green piste numerous times and I had even taken the ski lift to the top and skied down a long green piste to the main area. I definitely made huge improvements and am looking forward to going again and working on my speed and technique and not just "not falling and hurting myself."

A relaxing weekend in the country

So, there I was: right hand tightly clutching a thicket of grass growing out of the cliff face, left hand holding a small bump in the rock, left foot on the only dry foothold to be seen, and right foot hanging in the air. I knew that if I could move my right foot into the groove my left foot was currently occupying, delicately slide my left foot out and stretch it further along the rock face, and then support my weight as much as possible with my left arm, I just might be able to reach a better hold with my right hand and thus pull myself to a more secure spot on the rock. I'd seen three people do just that, and now they were safely past the narrow ledge and waiting for me on the river bank a few yards further down. There were only a few small problems with this plan: if either of my feet slipped, or if my strength failed, I would undoubtedly end up dropping about 4 or 5 feet down from the rocks into the freezing cold river below, potentially losing or ruining my phone, camera, passport, and wallet. Second, I have a terrible fear of narrow ledges which means that my hands were sweating and that I was trembling with fear. And, finally, my feet were just too big for me to get both shoes into the same small hole. I thought seriously about turning back and just taking the (very) long way back to the house, but that wasn't possible either as I'd already passed through a couple of similar ledges that would have been extremely difficult to recross, due to the aforementioned trembling. How did I get into this situation?

Ardèche is a department in south-central France known for its Mediterranean-esque climate and rural lifestyle. Thanks to his extensive mob ties and secret Swiss gold, Serge is a co-owner of a country home in the middle of Ardèche. As he and Amalia were planning on spending some time there this weekend, he invited me along. He also invited a couple good friends of his, Jose and Alexia, who were traveling there from Geneva. Traveling by plane. Private plane. That Jose flew. And I got to be co-pilot!

Fig. 1: Since I got to sit in the front, technically I was the first officer. I tried to "Make it so" a couple of times, but to no avail.

Those of you who've seen earlier posts will think you recognize this plane, but you'd be wrong. This is actually the twin brother of the plane posted below, and it lives in an airport in Bellegarde, France, half an hour by car from Geneva. So, Friday afternoon, I left work, walked to the metro, took the metro to Renens, caught the train to Geneva, took a tram to the suburb of Carouge, met Jose and Alexia in their car, drove to Bellegarde, then flew to Ardèche. Planes, trains, and automobiles, indeed.

The trip to Ardeche is about three and a half hours by car, but only an hour by plane. The flight path heads south along the Rhone river, passes west of Grenoble, then lands in Ruoms. Which, of course, is pronounced "Ruonce." Serge met us at the Aerodrome and drove us to the house, which was about five minutes away.

Fig. 2: No one wants to see my photos of Château Serge. Still, it's a pretty bad-ass place.

As the house was built eons ago, it has some unusual architectural characteristics. First, all of the original doorways were clearly designed for Smurfs. I know that people were smaller back in the day, but you also have to figure that they were just more used to ducking as they went through doorways. Fortunately the doorways were so low that were almost below my sight line and thus easily avoided. The outer walls, and the original inner walls, were made of very thick stone and no particular emphasis was placed on right angles. The house was also built on a hill, so it has three separate dungeon-esque basements and two floors of living space above those. As crazy as it was, it was pretty much par for the course in that area; the house next door looked like a medieval castle, tower included.

Fig. 3: Another entry in the long-standing series, "Paul and the ridiculously low doorways of Europe."

The plan for the weekend was thus: eat fondue, drink wine, do some light gardening, maybe take a nice stroll through the surrounding area, and just take it easy. The fondue was excellent, the yard work was fun (more on that in a later post, hopefully) and Sunday afternoon we set out for a nice stroll. Serge's house is a couple of miles from the beautiful Ardèche river, so we decided to wander in its general direction and check out the beautiful canyon it has created. After walking along paved roads for a while, we finally took a narrow path which meandered down a forested slope to the river below. Secretly, I was hoping that we would run into a pack of wild pigs (sangliers), as sangliers feature prominently in Asterix comic books and I was hoping for a picture. I'd heard that they can be vicious, but it would definitely have been worth it for a good photo.

Anyway, after an hour or so, the trail hit the river. Due to some weird geology, the walls of the river gorge are striated and awesome. It reminded me a lot of the Desolation Wilderness in California -- the striation and awesomeness, not the river, particularly.

Fig. 4: Later in the day, I had serious concerns that this would be my "last known photo." If that were the case, I would have expected all of you to get it airbrushed onto t-shirts in memorium.

It was at this point that things took a decided turn for the worse. Jose, being an adventurer at heart, decided that it would be a great idea to forget about the trail (we would probably have retrace our steps if we wanted to take the trail back to the house) and follow the river. Serge, being a masochist at heart, decided it was a great idea, and Alexia and I ended up going along for the ride. Let it be noted in the record that I voiced my opinion against this folly, sagely pointing out that rarely in hiking does one leave one trail only to stumble across a better trail. My Cassandra-like warning went unheeded, and we ventured off into the wilderness. As there was, of course, no trail, Jose grabbed a decently shaped stick and began wielding it like a machete to make a path, clearly enjoying himself way too much in the process.

Fig. 5: Amazonian jungle or French countryside? You decide.

The plan was to follow along the bank of the river, next to the cliff face, until we hit the next small town. Eventually, the cliff face rejoined the river, and we were left with a choice. Should we attempt to walk along the extremely narrow ledges on the cliff face and keep following the river, or should we just turn around and cross the river back were we first met it? It goes without saying what my vote was, as it is pretty much one of my biggest fears in life to be hanging onto a cliff face with no safe direction to go. But, as what was visible of the cliff looked passable, we decided to press on. My exact comment at this juncture were, "Mark my words, at least one of us is ending up in the river." Although I was concentrating a lot on breathing and staying calm, I did manage to take some nice photos.

Fig. 6: Serge being way too smug.

Predictably, the path along the cliff face did not end up as easy as we hoped. At numerous points, the "ledge" we were following disappeared and we were forced to grab onto plants, protrusions, and whatever would support you. Of course, Jose and Serge moved like f-ing chamois over the rocky terrain and frequently yelled things like, "it's not that bad," and "it's much easier further ahead." At no point were either of these statements true. The rocks were often slippery, the hand holds were largely non-existent, and frequently one would have to grab onto thorny vines in order to have a firm grip on something. I learned to hate Jose and Serge for the ease at which they danced along the rocks and I fantasized about pushing them both into the drink for getting me into this mess. It had been a rough afternoon.

Fig. 7: Figuratively, it felt like I was stuck between a rock and a hard place. Literally, I was stuck between a rock and a very wet and cold place.

After a long time, and quite a few breathers, I finally managed to make it within sight of the "end." At this point, there was really only one tricky section between me and safety, but it was by far the trickiest yet. Even with Serge and Jose trying to guide me and help me out, I just found that I did not have the coordination or faith in my balance to make the leap that would get me through to safety, or more likely, send me flailing into the water. I couldn't retrace my steps either, as the way back was almost as bad as the way forward, and as I had no hope of climbing the high rock face, I was left with exactly one option. If you've just eaten, I would probably wait a little while before continuing reading; it gets ugly.

Fig. 8: Our intrepid hero prepares to plunge into the icy abyss. Serge remains smug, as always.

Fig. 9: My blood was kept from freezing in my veins by the fiery passion of my hatred for Serge and Jose.

The water wasn't nearly as cold as it looked; I'd say it was at least 50. After a few yards, I wasn't hyperventilating anymore, and I almost enjoyed the rest of the swim. The water was nice and the fish kept their distance.

From that point, we still had a couple of miles left to go, but thankfully it wasn't too long before we hit the village of Labeaume, had a quick drink at the cafe, and then took the 1 km path back to Serge's house. We had a quick lunch, packed up, and finally headed to the airport and back to civilization.

On balance, it was a nice trip. Really, 99% of the time was spent relaxing and spending time with my friends, so it's unfair to harp on the 1% that was spent in abject terror for my very life. I certainly look forward to going back to Ardeche (the olives should be ready to harvest in November), and I think as long as I can avoid any more pleasant strolls, it should be a lot of fun.