Morocco

Morocco
Well it’s been a while since I’ve written but I will try to keep some more updates going on what’s happening over here.

I have just arrived back from 11 days in Morocco with Anne-Cecile which was amazing. We travelled around the country in a hired car crossing mostly through the centre of the country. The differences between Europe and Africa become really apparent and it was a very new experience for me.

Morocco trip route.

We arrived in Marrakech and soon discovered why there are no real published maps (one book recommended Russian military survey maps) and no GPS logs for this country. It was chaos and soon we were lost in scooting around back alleys. After some time we eventually made it to a road with a name and ended up in the city. Every 5 minutes someone would drive up next to us on a scooter and ask if we needed a hotel, or parking or anything else. And this we discovered is one of the characters of Morocco; everything seems commercial, to the extent that when someone is nice sometimes you find your self thinking "what do they want me to buy?” However, this is all part of the game. In the end we knew how to play and instead of reacting badly to this swamping of salesmen we just used it to our advantage.

The holiday basically went as follows:
* Day 1: Marrakech (ARRRRGGGGG SO MANY PEOPLE)
* Day 2: Hotel outside Casablanca (Avacado milkshakes)
* Day 3: Fez (soo many people trying to take our money)
* Day 4: Moyen Atlas mountains (eating fish tagine on our own charcoal brazier)
* Day 5: 4WD in our tiny car through villages to get to Rich
* Day 6: Merzouga in the desert, sleeping in a Berber tent in-town
* Day 7: Camel trek into the desert and sleeping under the stars
* Day 8: Draa Valley staying in a guest house (Riat) named after a festival in Anne-Ceciles home town
* Day 9 : Second night in the Riat, Cooked lunch with the women of the house teaching them French food while they showed me couscous.
* Day 10: Haut Atlas mountains, camping on a high plateau
* Day 11: Return to Marrakech, fly to Brussels, drive to Holland (home at 2am)

Fez we managed to stay in the house of a family living there who rented out their rooms while the family lived and slept in a small side-room off the lounge. It was great to see the actual houses and lives of Moroccans and play football with the kids in the street even if the daughter of the land-lady (who was studying English to be a tour guide and loved having people in her house to "correct misconceptions about Moroccans) tried to screw us out of money at every turn. Oh yeah, and one of the more amusing experiences was a shop-keeper getting angry and trying to take us to the police for not buying a mirror for 120E off him. Finally when we finished in Fez we staggered to the car and happily drove out of the cities.

From Fez we drove to Azrou purchased camping supplies, went into the mountains, out to the desert and then slowly back to Marrakech. In Azrou we also went carpet shopping (yep we had too) where the shop keeper started showing us what real Moroccan shopping should be. We sat, drank tea, talked and eventually walked out with 4 blankets and carpets (ARRRGGG), directions to a nice spot to camp in the mountains and the phone number of his "cousin" in Merzouga who ran camel rides.

Overall a fantastic experience, the country is like nothing I have ever seen, asking directions doesn’t work because of coarse most people don’t speak English and the country people don’t speak much French, and thus also cant read a map with English French text on it. The people are fantastic even if sometimes the focus on selling and money can make you want to hide in a hole. The food was simply fantastic, from fresh food to cooked tagines, it was great.

Photos are here and here

Italy

Arco

Arco is a small town on the side of a large lake in the north of Italy, at this time of year it’s crowded with caravans, campers, and tourists who come to enjoy the lake. Liam and I arrived stinky and hot after 2 days sleeping out in squats and in need of a good shower. However, unfortunately the only camp sites in town were the European tourist campsites that they have here. They are like little villages, packed wall to wall with pre-fabricated tents and usually include swimming pools, supermarkets, restaurants and everything you could ever need. However they come at a high price and are outside the budget of climbing bums.

Castle on the Arco lake

After asking some climbers coming away from a crag, Liam and I found out about a secret climbers accommodation. There was a little farm yard where the farmer didn’t mind smelly climbers squatting in his fields. This became our home for 4 days, shared with another group of Czech climbers. Each night we would sleep either amongst the grape vines or under the shelter of a small hut.

Climbing wise, we slowly worked our way through the area, sometimes doing some hard climbing and sometimes easy. The highlight was one morning we went out and climbed a 450m route overlooking the village. This was the longest climb both Liam and I had ever done and was a fantastic day out. Not too difficult, but just cruising up the cliff. We sat on a small ledge and had lunch in the sunshine and it really captured what I like about climbing, just being out there on the wall.

Welcome to Italy

Parete Zebrata, 450m of goodness

The Dolomites

The Italian dolomites exist in a seeming paradox where more people speak German here than Italian…even though we were still 100km from the Austrian border. In fact it used to be part of Austria until Napoleon invaded and gave it to Italy.

We arrived here with no real idea of where to go. We had guide books but it was almost impossible to pick out what peak we wanted to climb and where. We tried asking at the Club Alpine Italian where we got shuffled through a series of beautiful old offices and past a bar full of old mountaineers drinking wine at 10am before speaking to the manager of the club. With a lot of discussion in semi-Italian he said we were in off-season and everything still had too much snow. But we were not deterred.

First stop was Mt Marmolada which to our disappointment was not made of marmalade, but the biggest mountain in the range. Unfortunately we found that it was closed. That is to say we were between seasons, the winter ski season was finished and the summer walking season was yet to begin. All the shops were closed, no lifts were working (there is normally summer skiing here) and there was not a lot to be done. However, this did not daunt us and we went up the first morning to take a little stroll. Soon we were groin deep in wet soggy snow, but being the stubborn people that we are we pushed on. By the end of the day we had completed a fantastic training walk that entirely convinced us that we could not stay and climb in this area.

"Bush walking" in the Marmolada area

Venice

Thus now we had been climbing for about 3 weeks and feeling a little burnt out we decided to play tourist and drove down to Venice. Although we had not been staying so high it was high enough to be above the snowline mostly, it was amazing to come down off the mountains and feel the warmth soak back into our bodies. This was of course helped by the beer, slices of pizza and Gondola rides. We spend a day and a half wandering around the back streets of Venice and soaking up the atmosphere and revitalising ourselves before we moved back up to give the Dolomites a second go.

Evening in Venice

The Dolomites take 2

This time we drove up to Belluno to head into the mountains. We arrived at about 5pm and decided that for one reason or another we would pack our bags straight away and walk up to a high hut where we could base ourselves for 4 days. We drove long and hard into the night with massive packs full of gear and finally pulled into the hut at 11pm exhausted and sweaty. We stayed in the end for 2 days in the Winter Room of the 7th Alpini Hut, which is a room they keep open for safety reasons and for people who are travelling during winter. We had this cosy little 2 story building to ourselves.

After a lazy start, the next morning we stared up a Via Ferrata route. Via Ferrata is a cousin to rock climbing, but very different. It involves a mix of climbing and scrambling up cliffs equipped with metal spikes, wires, ladders and other accoutrement. Our plan was to complete a traverse of the range, however as we drove higher and higher we realised we might run into problems. We were encountering more and more snow and soon we had to start doing sections un-protected because the cabling was buried under ice. I took a pause half way up to take a phone interview and then Liam and I unfortunately had to make the decision to descend down…Turned away again by snow!


Via Ferrata in the Dollomites

Bizarre story 4: You want me to build what where?

The next morning as we lay in bed, listening to the wind in the trees and the deer skipping around outside and we heard an approaching noise. Louder and louder it became until eventually it sounded like it was on top of us. We scrambled outside to see a helicopter dropping 3 people 100m away from us. They were being flown in to construct a chair lift up to a little mountain hut. Over the next 3 hours as we sat and drank coffee, they flew in load after load of concrete to fill a pylon. Soon the novelty wore off and we did the 5hr walk out down to the car and headed north.

The day of many lands

North we drove towards Austria, we slept in a farmer’s field near the border and then skipped over into Austria for breakfast. All of a sudden the light fluffy bread and sweet pastries of the Mediterranean was gone and the bread took on a heavy dark look. It was an amazing change. However, Austria didn’t hold our interest for long and we pushed into Lichtenstein (to eat lunch and send post-cards to our selves…apparently it’s the done thing) and then over into Switzerland. Soon everything was clean and ordered, the cows had bells on, we exchanged our euros for Swiss Franks and every one became agonizingly nice. We were here to visit a friend of mine and shelter for a couple of days in a house (gasp!). We had an excellent 3 days with Mathew eating fine Swiss cheese, visiting a cheese making factory, trying to climb (pushed back by snow…again) and profiting well for finally having a roof above our heads. We even cooked a lamb roast one evening, opened a bottle of Penfolds and sipped down some VBs while watching the sun set over flowing green fields.

Swiss Cheese- before the holes are inserted

Swiss cows being taken up to high pasture

Onwards and Upwards

Back to Marseille

Finally it was time for us to leave Montserrat and charter our way back to Marseille. We saddled up the car again and moved off through Andorra, the Pyrenees and back to Marseille. Adore was a horrible little country, effectively having only two roads, the sides of which are lined with shopping centre after shopping centre and on through to a little town in the Pyrenees recommended by an acquaintance of Liam.

Following a little walking we settled down to a couple of beers and watched the sun set over the mountains. The bar we were in was not actually marked at all and the town was small enough that eventually someone went out into the fields to get the bar owner. It really was more like having a beer in someone’s lounge room than anything else. After 15 minutes of searching the proprietor found the menus and we took his suggestion...which turned out to be lamb chops and chips and after a couple more drinks returned to our camp sites. Unfortunately the horses in the field next to our tent had cow bells on (go figure) and wouldn’t you know it...horses don’t stop walking...ever...and we had a bit of a rough nights sleep waiting for those horses to stop bloody ringing the bells.

Liam cooking breakfast in the Pyrenees

The next morning we drove back to Marseille for a couple of days reprieve and to climb some of the routes we had been eyeing off for a while.


Bizarre story 2: Attack of the pterodactyl.

So Liam and I were climbing one of the classic Calanques routes. A perfect traverse across a sea-cliff. Sometimes 1m above the water, sometimes 30m. We started off abseiling down onto some rocks at water level and pulled the rope down. We then moved off climbing down the cliffs. As I led off one of the pitches I came around a corner to a ledge that was taken up by a bird the size of a pterodactyl sitting on its nest (yes it was THAT big). It spat out the horse that it had been chewing on and proceeded to screech at my like a howling banshee. Being the big girly-man that I am, I fled back around the corner. However, we soon realised we had no other possibilities except abseiling down into the water and swimming the 2-3km back to the beach and I decided to run the gauntlet. I crawled past the nest filled with several beautiful bird eggs and WHOOOSH-CLANG the bird came flying through and struck my helmet with his claws. Having committed myself, I continued to crawl along...WHOOOSH-BASH...WHHOOOSH-CLANG....WHOOOOSH-SPLART. On the last attack the bird decided to crap on me rather than attack and I was sprayed with bird-crap at the end of what Liam described as a "perfect bombing run". Luckily Liam’s bag protected me :-)




Gorges Du Verdon

Thus we left the luxury of having a roof over our head and moved on to the Gorges Du Verdon, a towering limestone canyon filled with a beautiful green/blue river. Here we settled in for 4 days of climbing in the gorge. The camping ground was in the middle of a funky little town with winding tiny streets and lovely old brick buildings. Due to the size of the gorge, the only way you can climb here is to abseil down onto a ledge (hopefully) with 4-500m of sucking vacuum below you. Then you pull the rope down behind you and your left alone in the middle of nowhere, its up or nothing, and out you climb. The more exciting option is to 'walk' down into the gorge and climb the massive sheer cliffs out to the top and the bar. It was fantastic here, the ambience was amazing and we profited certainly from our stay here. This was made even better by the discovery of Koningsbeer, which was a Dutch beer that sells for E2.30 for 10 bottles!!! Cheaper than water, or at least tastier.

Then, one afternoon, everything changed. We heard a distant rumbling and all of a sudden a thousand camper-vans and cars rolled in. From these cars 100s of Italians poured out and settled in. It was the start of the holiday season in Italy.

Thus we jumped in the car and aimed it in the direction of Genoa. Surely with the number of Italians here we would have their country to ourselves.


Bizarre story 3:Breakfast at Tiffanies
Thus we began the longest driving leg of the trip. About 800km. We drove out of Verdon in the early evening with the objective of stopping somewhere on the side of the road just outside Nice. However, we soon realised how densely populated the region was and this might be a bit of a challenge. In the end we picked a green spot on our map and aimed for that. We slowly drove past richer and richer mansions until we came to a small entrance to a forest and stopped for the night. We had only just got out of the car when a man with a dog the size of a horse came walking over and demanded to know what we were doing. After some explanations he said it was illegal to camp here, but he would let us, so long as we left no mess. A little shaken, Liam and I quickly started to prepare some dinner (it was close to midnight) and as we did this the man returned with some solar powered lights for us to cook by. Things were looking up. The next morning we were woken by a tapping at the tent door at 6am, the man had returned with a tray laid out with cups of espresso machine full of coffee, sugar and a jug of milk. Unfortunately he said, we had to go as hunters would arrive soon and they might be less friendly. Coming over to his house we found that he was a hobo also living in the woods, he had built a house out of wood, rocks and tarpaulins. An entire garden and set of tables and chairs was made out of bush rocks with moss on it and he spent his days painting pictures.

Onwards to Italy
Thus we passed into Nice for a beautiful morning swimming on their famous beach and eating traditional delicacies from the region in the bustling old-quater.

View along the beach in Nice

We passed through Monaco without stopping or seeing a Ferrari and continued across the border into Italy. From here we pushed long and hard into Italy eventually reaching a renowned national park called Cinque-Terre. Surely we could camp in such a national park...We were astounded to discover a massive tourist trap, full with 100s of tourists, restaurants, bars, and music. The walking trails were all on paved walkways and you had to pay to use them. Certainly not what we were expecting. Finally we jumped the fence off onto a closed off island and setup camp. Apparently we weren’t the only people with this idea and we were soon joined by a group of Lithuanian students. Unfortunately it was not to be a restful night as a band started up on the opposite shore of the lake in a natural amphitheatre...pointed directly at our camp site.

The next morning we packed out again and pushed off towards Arco in the north of Italy.

Cinque-Terre National Park. Which translates to the 5 towns, not 5 lands and seems logical

Booo hooo hooo, Waaaa waaaaa waaaa

That’s all I seem to hear now from Australia, complaining that I've been travelling for 3 months and haven’t sent any updates yet. Well FINE. If that’s what you want, that’s what you will get. But be it upon your heads!

The begin:
It began at the beginning, where all good things should begin. With everything loaded into the car (and not much breathing space left) Liam and I drove out of Marseille in the direction of Spain and Barcelona. After weeks of me finishing work and Liam relaxing, cooking and climbing we were on the way for 3 months of adventures. As we drove out of Marseille and into the Pyrenees we come to our first bazaar story.

Bazaar story 1:
On our first night out of Marseille we started the long drive over the Pyrenees, but darkness was quickly falling and we looked for a place to pull over and pitch our tents. After about 1h of searching we realised the Pyrenees were not as abandoned as we thought and were about to give up when we saw the glimmer of a camp fire on the side of the road. It was a nice German couple and we setup camp with them. So up went the tent, and we started cooking dinner. Soon a guitar came out of the camper and soft strumming followed. Then they started singing softly…something was a little strange…and then the dreaded phrase “I know a native American Indian song that is really easy, I think it would be nice if we sang it all together” …HIPPIES…we had stumbled up a band of travelling hippies . All in good fun we passed the evening drinking wine and singing Native American spiritual chants with not too much frowning at our pork sausage dinner.

Barcelona

The next morning we pushed on to Barcelona where we met up with Gareth and Bec. Being now in a completely foreign land Liam and I tried our hand at traditional Tapas. Walking into a back alley bar we got ourselves a beer and scoped out the exotic menu. After many minutes of discussion we selected 2 items a “bull blanc” and a “bikini” and braced our self for a plate of elephant gizzards or such. We were unfortunately disappointed when a toasted cheese sandwich and a Devon roll were presented to us. However, from this time onwards we had a much higher success rate. We spent 4 days drinking until the early hours, eating tapas in the afternoon and having traditional Spanish dinners at 11pm. During the day we walked and walked through the city, exploring ancient back alleys, drinking beer, eating tapas, and looking at all Gaudi’s architecture. Some of the highlights were drinking Sangria at 68c a litre (this breaks the “don’t drink alcohol that is cheaper than the price of petrol” rule), eating rabbit buried in piles of cooked snails, finding a bar where you have your own beer tap in the middle of the table (and the bastard Gareth wouldn’t let me go in).

Sagrada Familia in Barcelona, the best know of Gaudies works"

Monsterrat

Next we moved on to Montserrat, a little tourist village 50km from Barcelona, which due to some navigational issues in Barcelona took us 4h to drive. We arrived to be confronted by a massive barricaded gate and huge tourist trap. After negotiating with security (in Spanish) we established that there was a camping ground inside and we drove on through past the souvenir shops and expensive cafes. Thus we were astounded to discover a tiny little climbers camping ground run by an awesome Spaniard who in his time would have been one of the best climbers in Europe. The rocks here are smooth conglomerate towers that are astoundingly impressive. We spent 4 days here with phenomenal sunsets every night. One night we sat down with the camp site owner, we ended up drinking until late into the night and talking philosophy with him. However, the interesting part of this was that he spoke only a little English and French and we didn’t speak any Spanish, but we managed to understand each other. The highlight of this place for us was climbing Cavall Bernat a 220m free standing pillar of rock that we aide climbed (that is standing on equipment as you go). A phenomenal experience where you have 500m of nothingness below you as you haul your way up a featureless vertical rock wall.

Liam on belay half way up Cavall Bernat"

I should also mention now the interesting language situation that developed. Catalan (the language in Barcelona) is a half blend of Spanish and French but try as I might I could not speak it and whenever I did try I would end up speaking French. Luckily I could understand it and Liam didn’t speak French so wasn’t inhibited by this. This resulted in the interesting situation that I would translate the Spanish into English for Liam who would then respond back to them in Spanish…Oh I should also point out our Spanish was learnt from listening to a 30minute language guide in the car as we drove into Spain.

I wanna do something stupid...

This is the phrase I used when talking about my 30th, I didn't want to go to a restaurant, or a bar...I can do that anyway, I wanted to do something stupid, something new and different. Perhaps drinking champagne on the summit of a mountain...hmmm now that sounds like an idea.


Route maps for the two walks

Thus, we ended up in Massif du Vercors which is a mountain range on the south side of the Alps (close to Grenoble) for a weekend of snow shoeing, summit climbing and drinking champagne.

I was joined on this crazy adventure by not one, not two, but twelve individuals who hadn't realised the stupidity of signing up to a trip called "let’s do something stupid". Maybe they didn't read the disclaimer. We had climbers from Marseille (Chiara, Pauline, Mathieu), people from work (Laurent, Michael), people I worked with in Australia (Julian, Elodie, Emilie), people from Switzerland (Claire) and peoples partners (Erik and Augustin).

The drive from Marseille is in theory 3hr however, unfortunately we decided to trust the navigational skills of Google (combined with the map reading skills of Michael) and we arrived 4:15 hr late. Upon arriving we discovered that those coming from other cities had managed to ignore Google and arrive on time and were close to starvation because the food was in our car.

Our accommodation was the Auberge de Combeau, which I'd kinda gambled on. I wanted something high up with views and snow and stuff. It turned out do be a fantastic little cabin up in the snow, miles from anywhere, with a wood fire and home cooked French mountain food (possible ground pigeon meat).



Dinner of roasted stuff.

Anyway, bread and water was rationed out to those starving individuals who were waiting for us to arrive and we quickly gathered to tag along with a guided group of retirees who where heading up Col du Chevre (the Goats Saddle). We were quickly left behind by these amazing fit grandparents as we struggled to figure out how to walk with tennis rackets attached to our feet. Our tendency to push our comrades down the slope rather than concentrating on climbing it probably didn't help matters. We traversed around the side of the mountain and finally made our way up onto Les Hauts Plateaux (The High Plateaux) to magnificent views across the Alps and the Massif. Champagne was removed from packs and opened to the singing of happy birthday (although with a lot more snow ball throwing than is traditional), and Michael managing to pull a cake with candles from one of the bags (no the candles were not lit inside the bag)

Summit Champagne and Birthday Cake

We then traversed across the Plateaux and tumbled down the far side and back to the Auberge. The retirees had long since tired of our silliness and abandoned us to our demise. However, they had left a trail of bread crumbs for us to follow so we managed to survive. Upon our return we warmed ourselves with mulled wine, more champagne and traditional mountain faire. Michael and Claire eagerly suggested a crazy French game of Jungle Speed but everyone feigned exhaustion and staggering into bed.

Day two our objective was a bit longer, to the Sommet de la Montagnette. The walk up was somewhat dull (except for the amazing views, joking and silliness, interesting traverses, winter forests etc.). We travelled up the Valley du Combeau, to the Col de Greauson, and then mounted up onto Sommet de la Montagnette. The summit offered 360 views across the Alps which seemed to knock everyone senseless for about five minutes. Luckily we were able to bring them out of this stupor by feeding them more champagne. After a picnic lunch we loaded up and headed back to civilization and a 3h drive back to our respective homes.


Traverse under Sommet de la Montagnette

So thus, this is how the email of "I want to do something stupid" turned into an amazing adventure into the mountains. The setting was perfect, the weather was wonderful and it turned out exactly how id kind of dreamed my birthday taking place...something stupid :-)


Descent


Panorama shot from the summit, click for higher quality

more photos are here

How many holidays can you get into one year?

Link to photos

The month of August in France doesn’t exist. It’s the summer holidays and everything grinds to a halt. Shops close, restaurants stop serving and everyone leaves. At the university people take up to 6 weeks off, slowly the chemical supplies run low and solvents run out until you are reduced to washing your stuff with WATER (that’s a joke for all the chemists out there, because everyone knows stuff should be washed in either acetone or HPLC grade alcohol).

I was seen as dedicated because I ONLY took 2 weeks off (I get six weeks of holidays) and managed to cram about 35hrs of train travel and a trip across France into it.

First stop: Bordeaux
City of Wine
The city of wine, wine and ...well more wine. Having not stayed in a proper youth hostel here in France I was quite surprised to walk in and hear pretty much everyone talking English. It had been 4 months since I had spoken to an Australian and probably about a month since id spoken to an English national. I was quite amusing to watch the "youth hostel" high achy with the young innocent 20 year olds worshiping the woman who had been backpacking for 7 years etc. I of coarse come somewhere near the top of this pecking order because I speak French. I was quite surprised to hear stories of people walking from shop to shop saying "do you speak English" and not even trying French. I read an article about the arrogance of backpackers and that they are experiencing the "real country" compared with people on tours. However, they will only ever see the items listed in the top 10 of their Lonely Planet :-). The attitude was often "ok I'm in Bordeaux, entertain me". I guess I do exactly the same thing, but it’s still amusing to observe in others.


Some street in Bordeaux...unfortunately sans wine

Second stop: Arcachon
Atlantic costal resort village and haven for German tourists.
Since I don’t get enough of beaches living in Australia and Marseille I decided to go to another beach resort...Arcachon. I arrived to storming rain which didn’t let up for my two days here. I was either bound to my tent or the bar reading my book. However, this wasn’t so bad since it made me relax a little. The "campground" was just bizarre. 80% of the people there were foreigners, mostly Germans and it was huge. There were a number of supermarkets, swimming pools, a bar, 3-4 restaurants and even a gum tree in my campsite!!! Not at all what you expect when you book a campground. Anyway, the major attraction here is the Dune de Pyla which is the largest sand dune in Europe...what can I say, its big...it’s a sand dune...its in Europe...but its also pretty cool.


Playing like a child on the Dune de Pyla

Third stop: St. Emilon
Medieval walled village and major Bordeaux wine producing area.
For those who don’t know, France does not name their wine by the grapes used to make the wine, they do it by region and vineyard. To try to at least be able to make a slightly informed decision about the wine I was drinking I decided to do a wine course in Bordeaux. Which told me there are 53 regions and over 3000 different wineries IN BORDEAUX ALONE and they all produce different wine...so you cannot even go "Oh a BORDEAUX wine would go with that..." BASTARDS, I guess ill just have to revert to trying as much as I can :-)

Anyway, St Emilion is a medieval walled town that makes lots of wine. I arrived at about 8am before the tourist hordes and drank coffee watching the town appear out of the mist. Drank wine, walked in fields, visited massive underground cathedral carved out of a single piece of rock...drank more wine...


The rows of vines coming out of the morning mist

Forth stop: Puy De Dome
Range of extinct volcanoes in the Center of France
The next stop was Clairment-Ferrand which is a city in the center of France. All up I actually spent about 3hrs total in the actual city of Clairment-Ferrand and according to consensus at my work; this is about as much as you would ever want to spend here.

My plan was to do a 3 day hike though the Park of Volcanoes, finishing at Puy de Dome. After a number of false starts trying to find busses, baggage storage and maps I ended up on a tiny bus heading out to some small village vaguely near where I wanted to be and began my hike. I spent the first night camped at the Puy de Vache (peak of the cow) which was a mountain constructed entirely out of red pumice stone and ate dinner watching the thunderstorms roll in. I then continued on to Puy de Dome which is the largest of the volcanoes and delightfully described as having a radio tower that looks like a "rectal thermometer" in the Lonely Planet guide. It also sees over 10 million visitors each year so my stinky unwashed self joined the photographing hordes that were shuffled by the coach load onto the summit.


Nik needs shower BADLY

Puy de Vache

Final stop: Les Alps.
A big mountain range that divides Italy, France and Switzerland.
Finally to the highlight of the trip and I arrived in the Alps at Friday midnight in BAD need of a shower. Unfortunately the place was completely booked out because of a race around Mt Blanc.

Anyway, I've put the report here. Really, even if you are illiterate and cannot read this sentence, at least look at the photos...you wont be disappointed.

Finally it was back to Marseille and it felt so good to finally have a proper shower, change of cloths and to be back home. Living out of a backpack sucks, especially when you shun "more clean cloths" for "lots of mountaineering gear" :-)


Sampler photo of the Alps: Me running around on the Mer De Glace (the Sea of Ice)

Stupid french things

Hmmm well, I’m collecting a bunch of photos of stupid French things so I might as well pass them on to you...

Stupid 1: Le Tour De France


I think the tour de France is about as exciting as watching a all day documentary on the grounds-keeps job in keeping the grass growing for a 5-day test cricket match. Well I think you get the idea. However, since I’m in France I had to go and see it and it was quite amusing. Two hours of the advertising parade called 'le caravan' passing through and giving out free stuff (including 'Road sign Australia'). Followed by these guys on bikes whooshing past (I think they might have been on drugs actually). Actually I managed to get a spot 1 person back from the finish line and it was pretty cool. But...like watching grass grow ;-)

Stupid 2: Strange restaurants and food


I've already regaled you with "Pied et Paquette" and unfortunately I didn’t get a photo of the American "Chicken of The Sea" brand tuna. However, I do have this restaurant that sits in the centre of town in the posh dining area. It translates to "the kitchen with butter". All I need then is "cuisine de ail" (kitchen with garlic) and I’ll be the happiest man in the world.

Stupid 3: LA VACHE


Ok, so there is an exclamation here that is "la Vache" or "the cow" if something is very surprising. So Marseille is completely full with these cows at the moment, they are everywhere, 100s of them, all made by different schools, artists etc. This is one of them. Apparently it all started with some artist who made one cow and now they are throughout Europe. I think this is the reason for the pigs in Seattle too.

Stupid 4: Paris police


I snapped this pic of the rollerblading police when I was in Paris for Bastille Day. It seems like something out of a bad 1980s police movie "roller heat" or something. It confuses me, what are they going to do after they chase down the criminal? Immobilize him with a skid-turn? In Marseille the police travel in mini-busses and often take 3 army guys with assault rifles with them. Now that’s policing.

That said, when we were at the concert on Bastille day there were hundreds of normal police sitting around in busses waiting and as soon as the concert finished they donned their 'riot' armour and headed off in the direction of the concert. I guess they have some problems with large gatherings of youth here :-)

Stupid 5: Crazy imports


I don’t think I really have to say anything to this "gringo" brand Columbian coffee?