Category: hiking

Géisers for Geezers

On By StevenIn Chile, hiking, living abroad, Relationships, South America, Travel, Uncategorized2 Comments

Saturday we once again started late. This time, our tour started at 2:30pm and we headed to the salt flats about 30 minutes outside of San Pedro. Our first stop was Laguna Cejar, a saltwater pond. The name laguna translates to lagoon, which to me (and Merriam Webster), is “a shallow sound, channel, or pond near or communicating with a larger body of water.” This was a small body of water, not near or connecting to anything else and fed by underground springs. [Late update – I asked my Spanish teacher how you would say small lake (and showed her the picture). She said laguna. So, I am shocked to tell you that google translate, may be wrong!] We arrived at the laguna and changed into our bathing suits, because, like the Dead Sea, you when you get in the water, you float. The temperature was hovering in the low 30s Celsius (about 90˚F) and so the cool water felt wonderful. Sue and I both kept our hats (and sunglasses) on for the dip and we all (us, hats and sunglasses) came out encrusted with salt. The park had showers (no soap or shampoo allowed) so we had a quick rinse and got changed back into our clothes.

After Laguna Cejar, we visited Laguna Tebinquiche, a small, very salty lake with a very unique ecosystem. The hard environmental conditions including high solar irradiation, extreme temperature differences between day and night, high salt, and arsenic content (related to the volcanic activity nearby), make the lagoon a very difficult place to live. Some of the things that live in the lake are closely related to the earliest types of single and multicellular organisms that lived on Earth. Flamingos are often found at the lake feeding on brine shrimp, but when we were there where none. (Our guide said that most of the brine shrimp were gone and the flamingos had moved on in search of nourishment.)

Ignore us and look at the stars. That is the milky way on the top left with the southern cross at the bottom of the milky way

We returned to the hotel at about 7:30, had a quick meal and got ready for our “evening” activities.  The Atacama Desert is very high and the thin air, lack of light pollution and clear skies make it ideal for observing the sky. Overlooking Laguna Tebinquiche is the Atacama Large Millimeter Array observatory.  We did not go there. Instead, we booked a 10pm to midnight star gazing tour that was about 30 minutes outside of town. However, this tour, like so many other things in Chile work on Standard Chilean time. So, our scheduled 9:30 pick up was actually closer to 10:15 and our 10 p.m. start turned out to be just about 11 p.m. The “tour” consisted of three parts. First, a 30-minute introduction to stars, how they form, live and die. René, the “tour guide” described nebulas (nebulae?), various types of stars and some of the things we needed to look for in the night sky. It was quite interesting and tied in nicely to what we were going to see both with naked eyes and with the telescopes.  Next, he pointed out various stars, constellations, and described how the path of the sun is tracked against the arc of the planets across the sky. (He also talked about the difference between navigating in the northern and southern hemispheres and how it was done. PLUS, we got to see the best constellation: Gemini!) To me, this was the most beautiful part of the evening as we able to see the entirety of the sky. It was simply amazing, and I cannot adequately describe (how often do I say this or something like this) how awe inspiring it is. For the third part, they had two telescopes set up and we were able to see nebulae (I am pretty sure it is nebulae, but maybe not, in which case just pretend that I wrote nebulas), a binary star, stars from various constellations and Mars (Yes, I know it is a planet). (The nebula looked like a tarantula – if you used your imagination, which all sky gazing requires.) All in, it was an amazing evening that ended at just about 2 a.m.

Luckily for us, we had decided that we would take it easy on Sunday and hang out at the hotel pool.

Only kidding, if you don’t know us already, we don’t do lounging very well, so when we planned this weekend, we scheduled a morning tour of the El Tatio geysers. The pickup time for the tour was 5:30 a.m. Just about 3 hours after we put our heads down, the F#%$^@$# alarm told us to get our ancient carcasses out of bed and find the nearest coffee. Not our happiest moment. The geysers (which in Spanish is spelled géisers and pronounced geezers, which is an English term for old people), are about 90 minutes directly north of San Pedro on a series of small, mostly (well, at least somewhat) paved roads. They are also at about 4,320 meters (14,170 feet) above sea level. Have we mentioned that Sue gets altitude sickness? I attribute it to the fact that her brain, unlike mine, needs oxygen to function (mine simply bypasses the need to function). She wears a patch that contains scopolamine and it generally works really well. However at this altitude, it seemed be losing the battle even after augmenting it with chewed coca leaves and some coca tea (I think these helped, because I started to feel better afterwards). Like always she was a trooper, even when she turned many different shades of gray. The area is a field of geysers, some of which run continuously like a fountain and others are intermittent. Sorry, but once again, like I seem to say so often, nature is just unbelievable.

After wandering through the geyser fields for an hour or so, we piled back in the van and started the return trip. Along the way we saw various types of waterfowl, vicuña (which are related to guanacos, our favorite from Patagonia) and wild donkeys. We stopped at a small lake and saw lots of flamingos, which are actually animals, not just plastic lawn ornaments for Florida homeowners.  At one point I asked our tour guide about the weather and he mentioned that they were just about to enter the rainy season. The season lasted from the last week of January until mid-February and they might get rain. Wow.

We returned to the hotel just after 1 p.m. had some lunch (I tried cochayuyo, which we mentioned in an earlier blog and it was delicious! It tasted of the sea) and waited for transport back to the airport in Calama (about 75 minutes away), then after a couple of hours wait, our flight back to Santiago and onward to our AirBnB. We arrived home just after 11 p.m., the end of an amazing and wondrous weekend. We were, to put it kindly, just a bit tired. 😉

Before I finish: This is a naked and unabashed plug for Wikipedia. For those of you who regularly read our scrawls, you know that we often link to Wikipedia articles. It is a free, non-profit encyclopedia that is entirely funded by donations. There are no advertisements or paywalls and while it isn’t a research tool (yes, kids in high school and college, I am looking at you), it does have a massive amount of information for those of us who just like to learn stuff. If you can manage, please help them.

Patagonia – part 2

On By StevenIn Chile, hiking, Patagonia, Relationships, South America, Travel, Uncategorized1 Comment

On Sunday, we did a full day tour to La Leona Petrified Forest. It is about an hour and a half outside of El Calafate. Our driver and guide, Leon, picked us up at the hotel and drove us north through the scrub desert.  We stopped at roadside hotel/bar/restaurant/gift shop, and picked up another couple for the tour. The landscape is very similar to the desert in Arizona but without cacti, just low scrub plants and grasses.

We reached the petrified forest, which is much less of a forest and much more of a huge rock formation with eroded sandstone and basalt. It is very stark, beautiful, and extremely windy. We hiked along the ridges of several the rock outcrops and slowly headed down in the lower portion of the valley. Along the way, Leon explained the rock formations, how the different layers were formed, and how they are eroding at different speeds based on the type of rock that they are. We found dinosaur bones where you could clearly still see the marrow and he explained that one way to test if a rock is a dinosaur bone is to lick your finger and if the rock (only small ones obviously) stuck to your finger, it was likely to be a dinosaur bone. We also saw many petrified trees, some of which looked like they were just bleached wood. It is always incredible to see how well the organic material has been preserved by the minerals, the tree’s rings and features are clearly visible. As we circled down into the valley, I did notice that our van was significantly higher than we were, which gave me some minor cause for concern. Anyway, we hiked around the valley finding lots of petrified trees, interesting geological features and a few dinosaur fossils.  

As many of you know, I am terrified of heights. It is quite frustrating for me. The logic and reason portion of my brain knows that I am not in any real danger, that I have great balance and never stumble or fall when walking, and just because I am near an edge, should not in any way make it more likely I will fall. However, the old reptilian, flee or flight section of my brain cannot grasp these details and just keeps shouting into my head NO! DON’T DO THAT! MOVE AWAY, DON’T GO THERE. Oddly, I have terrible balance, but no fear of heights or the edge of cliffs. Hmmmm, maybe I need more reptilian brain. I work hard to keep my mind quiet and sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn’t. Our hike out of the canyon was one of the times that I could keep my mind mostly quiet. We zigzagged across one of the walls (which to be truthful was not a sheer drop, but it was a pretty steep drop) and up to the van, rising perhaps 300 meters. Neither Sue nor Robin were the least bit bothered by the climb, I on the other hand, needed a few minutes to collect myself after we reached the top.  

We packed ourselves back into the van and Leon drove us back to El Calafate in time for dinner. Robin craved meat for dinner so she headed off to a parrilla (steak house) while Sue and I headed back to Pura Vida for another home-style dinner. We ordered a bottle of wine called Fabula, which sounded like fabulous to me, but actually means fable. Despite the disappointing name, the wine was great.

Monday morning, we checked out of Hotel Posada los Alamos in El Calafate and headed for Torres del Paine in Chile. It was about a five-hour drive, once again across the scrub desert.  After about three and a half hours we turned off the road and down gravel road, and at this point, I thought to myself, sheesh, we are in a van with a driver we don’t know, we have no cell phone coverage, on a dirt road and have no idea where we are going. Sometimes I wonder about our decision making. However, it turns out that down the dirt road leads to the border crossing into Chile. We waited in a tiny shack for about 10 minutes for the Argentine immigration guard to do something with our passports and then finally hand them back to us and we were able to exit Argentina. We drove about a half a mile down the road, there was a sign that said “Bienvenido a la Republica de Chile” and the road was paved. We went another half a mile and reached immigration and customs for Chile. Once again, we entered a tiny shack where a young woman reviewed our passports and gave us some sort of paper. It appears that she has ample free time as there was a hair straightener plugged in next to her computer. We walked to the next little building which housed the police and customs. The police reviewed our passports and the piece of paper that the passport woman gave us and then stamped our passports. At customs, we put our luggage through a scanner, but the customs official didn’t seem to look at the scans. Once we finished crossing the border, our driver put our luggage back in the van and drove us about 50 feet to the next little building and put our luggage into a van run by our hotel which took us the rest of the way.

A few scenes from the drive

We are staying at the Hotel Las Torres, which is inside the national park, but still private land. They offer an all inclusive package that includes all food and excursions. The location in unbelievable and it is a perfect place for a respite from the outside world. We have no cellphone coverage and only have single digit speed internet in the hotel itself. Once we checked in, we talked to the excursions team and booked some hikes.

The hike starts on the right at the green/black circle and moves left to the blue lake. The distance/altitude chart moves left to right.

Sue and I decided that on our first full day, we would do one of the most famous hikes, called Mirador Torres del Paine, on our own. It is a 17km hike with about a 1,000 meter vertical climb. We woke up, grabbed some breakfast and hit the trail by 8:30 a.m. The hike is broken into three sections. Section 1 is from the hotel to the Chilean refuge (green circle with a white triangle on the right). It is 4 km up through the scrub desert and across the face of the mountain gaining about 400 meters, not particularly difficult, but there were sections with a 20%+ grade.

At about the 2.5 km mark, the course turned and there was a 300-400 meter stretch of very exposed, relatively sheer cliff. It is called Windy Pass, because typically the wind is blowing right through making it extra scary. We were lucky and had a calm day. Also, Steven is very brave. The path was easily two-people wide and while I was very uncomfortable, we made it through. The rest of the way to the 4 km mark was reasonably steep downhill to a refuge and we arrived there after a couple of hours. At the refuge, there is camping, bathrooms, a small store and picnic tables to sit and relax.

We rested for a little while then headed to section 2, the forest section. It is about 3.5 km, and as the name says, it is through a forest. It is a fairly easy walk, gaining only about 200 meters over the course of the entire section and it took us another hour or so. Section 3 is the tough part (starts at the green circle with a white triangle on the left). It is only 1.5 km long, but gains about 400 meters, with sections that are 40% grade and you are literally climbing over boulders. I hate boulders! The last 250 meters are once again across the face of the mountain, with a fairly steep falloff. This was one of those times that my inner voice could not be quieted. Yes, I know no one ever falls, that hundreds of people cross that rock field every day, that I should be more frightened crossing the road, but no matter what I was telling myself, I could go no further. I told Sue to carry on and I found a nice protected place and waited for her to return. I think she double timed it to the end of the trail, took a couple of pictures and double timed back to me. I am so grateful that she knows how to motivate me, when I need it, but also how to read the terror in my eyes and realize that I can go no further.

Once Sue had returned, we headed down. Now, my usual thinking is that down is always easy, but boy that last section was the hardest easy I have ever had. Climbing down rocks is nearly as hard as climbing up and I was especially glad we had our hiking poles.  Once we hit the start of the forest section, we stopped and ate our lunch as it was just about 3 pm.  The forest was relatively easy, although both of our quads had started to tell us that they were unhappy, we still had quite a long way to go and bunch of height to gain and lose. But mostly it was just a matter of putting one foot in front of the other to get to the Chilean refuge.

We arrived at the Chilean refuge at 4 p.m. and decided to rest for a few minutes. The remainder of the hike would be a climb of about 75 meters over a 300 meter stretch, along the exposed rock face, then about 3.5 km of relatively slow downward slope all the way to the hotel. We trudged up first 300 meters, reminding ourselves that we did this for fun. Once we reached the top, we turned the corner and were on the final downward stretch to the hotel. We arrived back at the hotel by 5:30 p.m. and collapsed into our room for a little while. We showered, headed to bar, had a drink, some dinner and were both asleep by 9 p.m.. It was a very long hard, but rewarding day. Even if I didn’t reach the end of the trail.

For our second day, Sue and I decided to do a half day excursion with a guide. Robin headed off on a full day excursion to another part of the park to see a glacier. Sue and I, along with about half a dozen other people, hopped into one of the hotel’s vans and headed for a hike that they describe as “Patagonia flat.” The walk is across the Patagonian steppes and features lots of guanaco, some cave paintings, and the possibility of seeing a puma. The drive to the trailhead took about 40 minutes and since it was drizzling, we all pulled on our rain gear. “Patagonia lat” means rolling hills, lots of 30-40 meter ups and downs and one big climb upward to reach the cave paintings. The “caves” are actually covered rock overhangs and compared to the cave paintings in France, they are quite limited. We rested there for a little while, then hiked back down off the rock outcrop and across the steppes. We saw lots of guanaco, learned lots about the plants and wildlife of the area, and happily, at least in my mind, did not see a puma. The whole hike took about 2 hours, it was a perfect amount of effort for us following the very strenuous prior day.

The hill with the caves
Cave paintings

One more day here, then we are off to Punta Arenas.

On to Patagonia

On By StevenIn Argentina, hiking, Patagonia, South America, Travel, Uncategorized2 Comments

Our last week in Buenos Aires was a bit of a whirlwind. My cousin Robin, an experienced traveler on her own, joined us on Monday. We spent the rest of the week working and visiting the last few places on our must see/eat list. On Thursday night we had a goodbye dinner with our friends Marco ndt Barbara at their place where they provided a wonderful feast, and we said a bit of a tearful goodbye.

Saturday morning we headed to the airport four hours early for our flight to El Calafate, having learned from our trip to Porto Alegre that the line to check in would be enormous. We were not disappointed, but what we did not count on was that Robin is a Delta Skymiles bigshot and her status with Delta allowed us to skip all the lines and check in quickly and easily. We zipped through the security screening and were in the boarding lounge in under 30 minutes. Since we had three hours to kill, we hunkered down and had coffee and breakfast. Good thing because the woman who was cleaning our apartment WhatsApped me a photo of the clothes Steven left hanging in the closet. Steven had time to taxi back, get his shirts, and still have time to finish his coffee at the airport. Usually we are good about checking every spot for left items, but somehow wit slipped our minds.) Our flight was on time (as it seems all Aerolineas flights are – even if they only allow 10 minutes to board) and relatively quiet. Not unexpectedly, we hit some turbulence over the mountains, but nothing to write home about – although, since my mother reads this, I guess I just have.

El Calafate is desert. Sue likened it to Arizona, but it is much colder and you can easily see the Andes mountains with snow on them. We checked into our hotels and then took the opportunity to meet at the Patagonia brewing company to watch the Argentina vs. Australia match. The USA lost while we flying, so I guess I was spared the disappointment of watching the games. Oh well, and good luck to Tyler Adams – the U.S. Men’s national team champion who went to the same high school as I did, and now plays for Leeds United in the English Premier league. Anyway, we watched as Argentina made easy work of Australia and all the Argentines (and us non-Argentines) enjoyed the game and the result. Afterwards, the main street was flooded with cars driving around honking their horns and there were several impromptu parades down the street.  

We had dinner at a place called Pura Vida. I would call the style Argentine home cooking. Sue had pumpkin soup and lentil stew. Which she said was the first true vegetarian food she has had in a restaurant since we arrived. It was muy rico! Robin had lamb stew and I had a chicken pie. All were very delicious and quite large.

Sunday morning we woke up, put on our cold weather gear (multiple layers, winter coats, hats and gloves and we headed to the Perito Moreno Glacier. Iguazu Falls which we visited a few weeks ago, demonstrated nature’s raw unbridled and immediate power. The Perito Moreno showed us nature’s glory in a whole different way. It stands about 30 kilometers (18 miles) long and about 80 meters (250 feet) tall at the face. The ice on the face is mostly white with an eerie blue that looks like back lighting. As you would expect from an ice formation, the temperature hovered in the low single digits centigrade. Our bus dropped us off that the visitor’s center on the south side of the glacier. The park has about four miles of walkways and steps (many many steps) that went from about 100 feet higher than the glacier (where the visitor center was) to the waterline. Sue, Robin and I walked all of them in our allotted 2.5 hours. Words simply cannot describe the amazing beauty of it, hopefully some of our (read Sue’s) amateur pictures will.

After a quick pack lunch we hit the bus again for a quick drive over to what the sign called “Safari Nautical.” It is a boat ride that takes people right up to the face of the glacier. We were quickly and efficiently loaded onto the boat and we headed up the lake to get a whole new perspective on the glacier. Once again it was glorious. The boat takes you close enough to almost reach out and grab the glacier.

Please try and remember that the face of the glacier is 80 meters tall.

We headed back onto the bus, and back to the hotel, quite exhausted, but with views like this out of the bus.

Our last weekend in Nice

On By StevenIn France, hiking, living abroad, Nice, Relationships, Travel, Uncategorized1 Comment

Friday was yet another beautiful day on the French Riviera. We took an excursion to another island just off of Cannes. This one is called St.-Honorat and is the home to a monastery and Cistercian monks.  They make (and sell) wine and one a month they offer a tour and wine tasting. To get there, we took the TGV from Nice to Cannes, which was cool even though it didn’t get up to high speeds, then boarded a ferry that took about 15 minutes. Once we were there, we wandered around the island for about an hour before the tour. The tour itself seemed very informative; unfortunately it was in French and we only understood a smattering of it. One person on the tour was using Google translate to get a better understanding, but we looked on this as an opportunity to practice our French and get what we could from the explanation. After the tour and tasting, we wandered around the island, had a picnic lunch and generally enjoyed the peace and quiet.

We caught the ferry back to Cannes and the train back to Nice, and that would normally be the end of the day’s adventures, but Le Flick (the police) had other plans. We had not been asked for our train tickets when we boarded nor on the train. After we exited, Le Flick were checking tickets in a doorway on the way to the exit. Unfortunately, they seemed to be doing it in typical French fashion, meaning no organization at all. Just a couple of guys standing in the doorway with scanners. Imagine a rugby scrum with more people and less order. Anyway, after a minute or two we got to the front and Sue showed our tickets and we were free.

On the walk home, we stopped at the boulangerie for our daily baguette and decided to get an apple tart for dessert. The very nice lady behind the counter let us know that there was a weekend special, which we understood to be buy one get one free, so we added a second apple tart. Well, it was actually buy two get one free. But we had already committed to the weekend special, and that is how we ended up with the lemon tart too. (Steven thinks I didn’t understand that, but I really wanted the extra dessert.) Oh, the trials and tribulations of learning the French language.

Saturday, we decided to go see Èze, a small mountain village just outside of Nice with stunning views of the Mediterranean. It is at about 1,400 feet perched on a sheer cliff. We took the local bus which dropped us off just outside the old portion of the village. We trudged up the last couple of hundred feet, explored the village and visited the exotic gardens. It is a lovely village and Sue took tons of photos, some of which are shown below. 

After a couple of hours of looking around, we had a quick lunch and discussed how to get home. We had two choices: Take the bus back the way we came (cheap, easy, relaxing, and we knew how to do it) or hike a mile and a half down the Nietzsche footpath dropping 1,400 feet to sea level and take the train home (more expensive, no idea how hard the climb down would be, the village is set on a sheer cliff, and there was only a little information about the trail down). Apparently Nietzsche lived in Èze and they have commemorated that by naming the walking path after him. There are a number of signs with his poems along the route – not sure that if I was a resident Nietzsche is who I would want to be known for…but that is their call. Of course, we did the hike – at this point I would like to blame Sue for the decision, but in good conscience I have to let you know that she left it up to me (I wanted to do it, but deferred to Steven’s fear of heights. He turns out to be pretty brave.) and I foolishly thought the hike wouldn’t be too terrible. Actually, it was not terrible at all. It was a fairly steady downhill with only a few very exposed cliff drops (most of which I didn’t realize until I was past them on the lower portion of the switchback). There were, once again, tons of beautiful views and dappling of shade and sun so it wasn’t too hot. It was excellent choice. We arrived down at the station cooled our heels (and the rest of our bodies) for about 40 minutes and the train arrived and took us home. No drama this time at the train station!

At some point in our wanderings of the old town in Nice we found a 24/7 automated pizza machine. Pizza from a vending machine! When we found it, we knew we would have to return and try it out. Saturday night we did just that. It is pretty cool. We used a touch screen to select our pizzas, paid and then Voilà! Trois minutes plus tard the pizza appears. We walked home and sat down to watch a movie, drink wine and eat reasonably good automated pizza. Apologies for the quality of the video and editing.

The Pizza Machine

Our penultimate weekend in Nice

On By StevenIn driving, France, hiking, Nice, Relationships, Travel2 Comments

Friday was gorgeous, the sun was shining, and the temperature was in the low 20s.  We walked from our apartment to the Musee Matisse, which is nestled an area called Cimiez that is straight north of where we are staying. Like so much of the French Riviera, Nice is surrounded by hills, so once you leave the shoreline you are heading uphill. The walk was only about 3km with a 100 meter incline – easy compared to Istanbul, but still uphill. The museum is in his house and much of the collection was donated by his wife. You enter through a recent addition that is below ground level and work you way up. The lower floors display earlier works and explain Matisse’s education and influences. The top floor holds most of the collection. I was very surprised by the amount of work that he did in sculpture and other media as I think of him only as a painter.

Just outside his house there is a large park that leads to the monastery’s cemetery, where he is buried. Of course, we wandered through the graveyard until we found his tombstone (it was well marked, and we really just had to follow the signs). Dead person bingo part ??? I don’t remember. I have lost count.

We walked home (all downhill!) and then had dinner at a Portuguese restaurant (Le Barbecue) that one of Sue’s friends recommended. After dinner, we wandered through the old town and found nice bar (where the waiter refused to speak French to us and many others around us were speaking English, feh!), sat outside, had a drink and watched the world go by.

Saturday, Abi was flying home from Marseilles. Our plan was to rent a car, drive to Calanques National Park, hike for a while, drop Abi at the airport and then come home. Unfortunately, the weather gods were not cooperative. It rained all day, and we did not bring our wet weather hiking gear, so we had to abandon our hikes. Instead, we decided we would have a late lunch and then take Abi to the airport. For the first time that I can remember we found that Google had incorrect information about restaurant hours. We tried three different places, all of which were listed as open, but none of which were. We finally settled on grocery store take out. Not our most memorable Saturday, but it is always nice to spend time with my daughter. There were a few successes: we managed to drive a couple of miles into the park and find a nice photo spot, we had an interesting tour of Marseilles including a “road” called Impasse du Moroc – which was nearly one car wide, and our rental car was a sweet little Mercedes. (I think maybe Steven has been convinced to buy a Mercedes in Germany, drive it around and ship it home. Win for me!)

On the left: A photo of Calanques National Park / On the right: Impasse du Moroc (thanks Google!)

We only have one more weekend left before we return to the US for Thanksgiving. We are really looking forward to seeing our friends and family.

Into the Alps

On By StevenIn France, hiking, living abroad, Relationships, Travel, Uncategorized2 Comments

We headed out Friday morning for a town called Chambéry. It is about 4 hours southeast of us and in the heart of the French Alps. For those of you who are fans of the Olympics, it is an hour north of Grenoble (1968) and an hour and a half west of Albertville (1992). Once we arrived, we did as we always do and wandered the town. For some reason there is a giant fountain of elephants in the main square. I will leave it to you to investigate why.

On Saturday morning, we went for a stroll in the market and then headed out for our day’s main activity, a “leisurely” 11.5km (7.2 mile) hike that we found on AllTrails called Circuit of the Bridges. It was in a small village called Saint-Jean-d’Arvey about 10km away. I neglected to notice that it was also 335m (1,000ft) higher than Chambéry.  For those of you who do not know me, I am very skittish when it comes to heights. Driving up and down mountain roads is at best difficult and at worst has me wanting to curl up in the back seat and whimper – even when driving. So the ride up to the trailhead was a little unnerving, but we made it.

The trail started at 600m (2,000ft) and was easy to find, but AllTrails states that the elevation gain is 450m (1,500 feet) which is well within our limits; afterall, we climbed Toubkal in Morocco, which was 16km and 2,500m (8,000ft) in elevation gain – just to the base camp. However, that was 4 years ago, and we had not been sedentary for 18 months due to the pandemic. I found the hike quite difficult. It started by dropping 250m to a single span wooden bridge over a deep ravine. (Oh yeah! Walking across a wooden bridge with a terrible fear of heights! ) I took a deep breath and pressed on. (He’s very brave.) I even stopped for Sue (who has no fear of anything and is a hiking machine) to take a photo of me – I am attempting to smile.

From that point it was an all-uphill hike to about 700 meters (2,300 ft). We had a picnic lunch along the trail and then climbed up and down the ravines.  We made a detour of about 1.5km when we followed an incorrect sign on the path. (Oops! It said Thoiry, but we didn’t notice it also said “the long way.”) The village of Thoiry is about halfway through the hike. We had hiked almost 8km (5 miles) and I was done. Sue graciously agreed to cut short the hike and we took a couple of short cuts and ended back at our car in Saint-Jean-d’Arvey after about 12km (7.5 miles), a bit longer than the original hike length. I still don’t understand how we cut the hike in half and took a shortcut, but still hiked longer than the original long route. Faulty GPS, faulty AllTrails, faulty us? Over the entire walk we saw perhaps 10 people, so it was just us, our cameras and our thoughts. Enough words…Here are photos

  • The hike per AllTrails
  • Are we having fun yet?

Sunday we decided to go to Grenoble to look around. We started by visiting the Resistance Museum. It was very well done (and free, but they did not have a “Viva la Resistance t-shirt — disappointing) and we spent about an hour in it. Afterwards we wandered into the old part of town and were terribly disappointed. Nothing was open (ach, dimanche!) and we just didn’t see anything of any interest. We walked back to the car and headed home.

Google says it is a 4-hour drive on the highway; we drove to Lyon on the highway, stopped for some lunch on the highway and made the grand decision that we were in no hurry to get home. Steven neglects to mention that we took the highway hoping that the rest stops were open since there was no other way to get food on Sunday. We told Google to find us a way home without the highways and off we went on a scenic tour of France. Boy do the French love roundabouts (des rond points). We hit one every kilometer or so. After a few hours we decided to head to a medieval city called Beaune that one of our friends said was pretty (also it is the wine capital of Burgundy). By the time we got there, it was about 7pm and we once again had a wander. (Restaurants were open. Viva la tourisme!) The place was packed with tourists and after about 45 minutes we had enough.

Once back in the car, we decided to go back on the highway and covered the last 130km in about 90 minutes. It was nearly 9pm by the time we got home. A long but very fun day.