Dali, Avignon, "Off Festival," and the Alps

DALI, AVIGNON, "OFF" FESTIVAL, THE ALPS

    
Dear Friends, Hello once again! 

     Lack of good internet at a price we can afford, and a computer down for a couple weeks has slowed this third post. 

     Not that you or me are in any rush :)  The long summer days have not been conducive to being near a computer.  Now the Fall Equinox has arrived, the days are shorter, and I can see the screen better at night :)

     There's a chance you may recall that we left off on the Spanish Coast, north of Barcelona.  Spain, much of Europe and so many other places continue to be in turmoil.  A young group of internet savvy folks won 9% in the elections in Berlin, pretty much with a single-issue platform: internet privacy from folks such, such as Google and Facebook, and from governments. 
      This is a real issue: we stopped using Facebook this Spring due to privacy concerns, and know others who have done the same thing.  Yet the internet has been central to taking down despots all year.

     We believe the internet should be private, and that it should be a human right to not have it shut down by dictators, or anyone else.

     For these young Berliners to win this much, first time out, with this issue, is astounding -- they, like the Spanish indignados, have had it with the current system.  They believe a new system of community will be based on all the new technologies of communication. 

     They advocate an information-based "liquid democracy," where everybody is more involved every day.  Let's tell the truth, that's some kind of peaceful anarchism!  These young folks will be expressing their views in the state legislature.


     OK, off the soap box and back to our journey. 

Are you ready for an instant transition from a peaceful Spanish pine forest to surreal psychedelic?   From Callella, we drive an hour to Figueres, north of Barcelona, not far from the French border.  Here we find the "Dali Gala Theatre Museum." 

     I’ve posted a few photographs here -- hope they inspire you to have a look in a big format art book at more of this genius’ art.  Your library has this book. 

     I remember the first time I opened a big book of Dali in college. I only put the book down when I had to for several days, finding myself astounded, mystified, and, well, quite simply: tranced out.

This is a BIG painting!

     Dali transcends any line between theater and art.  He’s more like the mustachioed ringmaster of a circus – no, he’s the writer, scene master, producer, director and star, the shaman- trance-master of the whole incredible happening. 

Walk around the pylon,
Dali's looking at you

What else?  Life is fragile. 
Not exactly a medieval rampart

     It’s a round museum with giant eggs balanced on high walls, kind of like faceless Humpty Dumptys cloned and, as of yet, not falling! 

     In the entrance yard, a sailboat sails through the sky, balanced on a giant stack of shiny tires that emerge from a 1920’s Cadillac convertible.
 
      In front of this is a statue of a woman, and she’s all woman—fearlessly exaggerated: big, round, buxom and beautiful, and over-the-top sexy.    Dali’s world includes just about everything, and there’s one thing he seldom leaves out: erotic passion.

Hmmmm . . . Amazing!

     There's a big hall with the gigantic paintings.  Then three big circular galleries are stacked on one another around the hall.  These are filled with hundreds of paintings, sculptures, optical illusions, multi-media and interactive whatever-they-ares, you name it. 

     It’s all dramatic, extreme, and absolutely imaginative.  Dali is so alive, vibrant, colorful, amazing and impossible, by the time we leave, we’re overwhelmed, pretty much speechless.

The fish is an ancient Christian symbol

      Dali lived thirty miles east of Figueres in a little fishing village, Cadaques.  It'a a wild moonscape of surf-dashed rocks.  We we’re warned that it’s windy there.  We parked on a hill not far from the sea. The wind whistled and roared all night. Free Flow the Van got a good rocking.

Cadaques, where Dali lived for years

     Dali did a series of paintings in which everything is formed from stones that look like the rounded beach stones of Cadaques.  In these paintings, only the female breast remains rounder than any natural stone can be, and so comes through as something rounder and softer than rock.

                                    *             *            *

     Just as Spain in this area feels kind of French, just over the border France feels kind of Spanish.  We know it’s changing, though, when a great plate of bacon and eggs shows up for breakfast in the first fishing village in France.  Bacon and eggs – yes – it’s not what food it is, it’s that whatever it is, it’s cooked well!

     Back in France again, we succumb to the pay-way and drive several hours to a rest-stop near Nimes.  You pay to drive fast, you get it back being able to camp in beautful rest stops for free. 

     This one has a great big park with a preserved Roman Theatre with columns.  Near the park you can climb the spiral staircase of an artsy tower and look out a hundred miles.  We go up there at sunset. The photos are here.

Sunset from Nimes rest stop

We camped next to this near Nimes

     Lonely Planet tips us off to an amazing festival in Avignon. We arrive to find ourselves in the middle of a three-week extravaganza.  Hundreds of performances going full-time all day every day.

     We camp on an island in the middle of the Rhone River.  It says “Full” on the sign out front, but we ignore that, drive in, and are given a space immediately.  Who knows?  We don’t ask.

     The Rhone looks as big as the Mississippi. From an island in the middle, it’s a broad and lovely view across the wide the river to the medieval high-walled city of Avignon, with its ancient turrets and towers.  Amira’s first comment as we near the narrow gates in the walls was: “This is Le Mont St-Michel on steroids!” 

Wind-blown Amira on
bridge to Avignon

The Pope's
Avignon Castle

Avignon from island in Rhone River
-- what you see is half the river width here

      Folks write about the noise and color and chaos of India when they enter it the first time.  Avignon at festival time is like that!  There are over a thousand scheduled performances in dozens of theatres, a number that does not include the endless, noisy, colorful street performers. 

     The crowds surge through the narrow old streets and throng the plazas. There are more actors and actresses, musicians, magicians, jugglers, artists, and dancers of every stripe, than we've seen in one place before.  There’s music on every corner. 

     Thousands of flyers announce all the dance and theater, a chaotic colorful wall-paper throughout the town. Oh, I left out the thoughtful talks.  In France, intellectuals are not shunned, they’re more like rock-stars, and the festival is the place to be provocative.

These ladies seen in Avignon shop window

     It’s called “the OFF festival.” Originally there was a state organized festival, which is still happening too.  But the big thing is the “OFF” festival, performances and art by just about anybody who could not get into the “ON” festival.  These are more radical and avant-garde. 

      We meet so many interesting folks!  Movin’ Melvin Brown from the US, speaking and singing in English, does takes on black music and dance from the slave ships to Michael Jackson, with an all-out dance band that has the whole crowd up and movin’! 

     We hang out a bit with his sweetie Italian manager Francesca.  Movin’ Melvin had borrowed his band from a hot jazz lady, chanteuse Lorraine, who the next night does an exquisite, humorous cabaret jazz version of Nat King Cole’s ever-popular love songs, mostly in English, with humorous complaints from the band, that wants to hear the songs in French.

    Sitting in a café in the park, up walks a femme fatale (that’s French!) who invites us to her show on the “special happiness of woman.”  I know I won’t be able to follow her thing in French, so while she’s speaking English, I go straight to the point:

     “What,” I ask her, “if indeed women’s happiness is a special kind, exactly is that special happiness?”

     Her instant answer: “The clitoris!”  She’s a charming sexual liberation activist from the south of France.

Ferris wheel near Gate to walled Avignon

     We talk with young Emmanuelle from Australia after her show of 50’s pop boogie-woogie piano.  She tells us her dream to move to New York and make it big.  She’s talented and smart and brave and fun -- we say, “go for it!”  Over 4,000 talent scouts, journalists and producers come to this festival to “discover” people like Emmanuelle.

     A young woman from Paris named Ama does great shiatsu in the street for donations.  She can “follow the Qi,” and we both experience her healing touch.  She lives near us in our campground, and we become friends. 

Ama with her Happy Face sign --
A Massage or a Message?
Usually both!

Ama does shiatsu on Amira

And Michael

     Ama was born in Peru, and her Mother had named her Tamara-Amaranta.  She looks Indian and (fortunately for me) speaks Spanish; we all get by in a silly mangle of Spanish, French, and English.  When she was four, a French couple adopted her. French became her first language.

      Her first published book of poetry is titled LamBEaux, literally, “Fragments,” with an emphasis on the English word “be.” 

     On the back cover, beneath her fiercely present picture, is a verse from one of the poems within.  First the French, then my (let me emphasize! --halting) translation:

    “Comme affirmer n’pas possible

     Et que le pied posé á terre

     N’est qu’un pas de plus vers

     Qui le sait?

     Alors vivre l’instant présent

      Et ses premiers désirs”

 There's a chance :) this could be read as:

     “How, it’s not possible, for one to deny

     That the feet rest firmly on the earth

     How can one say that this line of verse

     Is not known?

     So live in the present moment

     This is one’s deepest desire.”

     Still working on this one.  I met another friend who speaks French, German and English well, and she came up with this:

     As affirmation is impossible
     And as the foot that is placed on the earth
     Is nothing but one step closer
     Who is to say?

     So live in the instant moment
     And its deepest desires

      Ama has just moved to Avignon from Paris. It sounds like she cannot handle living in big city tension any longer.  She says: “In Paris, everyone’s intoxicated!  Smoking, drinking ten cups of coffee all day, and then wine!”  

      She drops by our tent to chat or talk politics (“There’s no chance of revolution in Paris!”), do a little energy work on us, take us out to breakfast, or on a walk or boat ride on the river.  

     The boat takes us to beautiful green park full of flowers atop a high rock just north of the city walls.  From there we see the countryside all around, with high mountains in the distance. 

       After a walk, Ama complains that she feels tired .  After a few questions and a pulse check, I give her a powder to strengthen her digestion, enrich her blood, make her muscles and stamina stronger.

      When we part, she tells us she’ll be going back to Chile for the winter.  Last time I checked, it seems there is a youth revolt underway there!

    

PROVENCE, DIGNE-LES-BAINS,

and THE FRENCH ALPS

     We pick up camp in Avignon, put on CD of Spanish guitar (bought from a street musician) and drive through Provence toward Digne-les Bains at the southern end of the Alps.

  The Alps are a mighty chain of mountains that rise near Vienna, make a big arc across Europe,  and only come to an end in the sea at Nice. The highest peak, Mont Blanc, is in France; most of the biggest peaks are in Switzerland, but Austria and Italy contain high peaks too. 

     The range forms the borders between all these countries, so that when you reach a high ridge, you’re often standing with a one foot in say, Italy, and the other in France.

    We actually have a plan!  We are doing a route the French call Le Route des Grande Alpes, starting near Nice, going north through several national Parks.  We’ll turn right at Mont Blanc, head into Switzerland to explore the Jungfrau/Eiger/Matterhorn/ Interlaken area, then turn south through a very long tunnel to the Italian Lakes.

     The weather has become too warm and humid along the Mediterranean, so we choose the cooler, dry and sunny Southern Alps as a place to escape the summer heat of Italy and Greecem -- not to mention the European vacation hordes of July and August. 

     Once again, as in Wales, in an obscure French National Park called Queyras, folks are saying “Wow, you guys are really off the beaten track!  Why did you come here?”  

     Amira and I have a tradition of mountain walking in July and August, and that’s what we’re doing – enjoying rushing creeks and rivers, sunsets over gorgeous peaks and meadows, and going crazy about the flowers everywhere.  

Seen in Provence

     I digress  -- we're driving from Avignon through Provence!  Provence is one of those places that’s so sweet and beautiful you think about moving there.  We’d love to linger as we drink in the fields of lavender – did you know lavender is a sage-like plant that loves dry heat?  We hope to enjoy this beautiful place beloved of the Impressionists a bit more in October. 

     All along the road it’s harvest time for apricots, nectarines, melons and veggies.  We load up, perhaps a bit much on the fruit, which turns out to give us travelers a great cleanse for a few days! 

Sunny Provence!

     Between fields of lavender and sunflowers folks are setting up a little le marche, market, that  alongside the road. It’s all local products sold by the producers themselves.  Amira immediately scoops up squash and green beans and fresh veggies.  Michael finds quiche Lorraine fresh out of the oven and apricot jam flavored with saffron, hmmm! 

     Then we find a guy with a head scarf who turns out to be a Dead Head.  When he hears we’re from the San Francisco area, we compare notes on the music of the Grateful Dead.   He sells us home-made tinctures of lavender and chamomile.  Chamomile tea before bed may get you up to pee in the night.  Not so a few drops of this tincture, very relaxing. Though this islate July, he tells us we we're his first American tourists of the year -- we really do stay on the back roads.

     Amira is so thrilled about the quality and prices at this market that she's laughing happily with everybody. We leave with fresh goat cheese, custard pudding, and olive oil with a little metal spout to pour it out for bread dipping. We chat with everybody, answer their questions about where we're from and where we're going – toute le monde!  

     Later we stop under shady trees by a river and make le midi, the midday meal.   The unscheduled nature of our lives, stopping when and where it feels right, feels sweet.  We drive on to Digne (Deen-yay?—we really tried to learn how to pronounce this, and got six different answers – we’re going with the easier one from l’office de tourisme). 

Digne-le-Bain's flowered bridge

     Digne greets us with a flower-lined bridge over a rushing mountain river. Big peaks loom over a sweet mountain village.  Our camp is near a creek in a gorge; we can easily walk to town for the patisserie, our usual first stop so Amira can get her directions oriented, to buy our daily baguette and croissants.

     We find a little back street restaurant that’s popular with locals, peering carefully at their plates to see how good the food looks.  All the side-walk tables are filled on our first pass, but eventually we’re served heavenly food. 

     Next to us sits another mountain-walking couple.  Blessedly, the husband speaks English, helps us through the menu, and tells us where they are going in the mountains.  A couple weeks later, we go there too.

     We walk almost every day, along rivers, up hills to little churches in little villages in the countryside, or just around town. We make picnics where we find ourselves. I spend time planning our alpine route, and we both spend a lot of time reading and sharing what we’re reading with one another. 

     Here's a few photos taken as we explored around Digne-le-Bain:

In a village outside Digne

View from Digne camp

Digne-le-Bain

    

     Have been wanting to mention how much our journey has become about reading.  Amira recently read Gandhi’s Autobiography and Gandhi’s Passions: The Life and Legacy of Mahatma Gandhi by Stanley Wolpert.  She then turned to Martin Luther King’s autobiography, compiled and edited by Clayborne Carson, reading it aloud to me.  I love being read to by Amira!  

     I poke around in my e-book collection of books on non-violence and read relevant passages to her.  A book I especially treasure is Walter Wink’s Jesus and Non-Violence.  For anybody with an interest in getting a sensible take on Jesus, don’t miss this book by one of the sharpest and clearest scholars I’ve ever read.  Just to really understand what Jesus meant when he said resist not evil, turn the other cheek, go the extra mile, if someone asks for your cloak, give them your underwear too, you absolutely need to know the culture of the time, and Wink does.  The book is a treasure!

     We’ve both had an interest in the subject of non-violence for a long time.  2011, like the late 80’s, will be remembered as the time when one non-violent revolution after another succeeded, especially in the Arab world. The spirit of non-violent revolt is spreading all over the planet right now, the list is long!  This morning India absurdly arrested a man starting a hunger strike against corruption, and the whole country is in an uproar, not about corruption, but freedom of speech!

      We read together the great story of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt during the war years, titled No Ordinary Time, by the accomplished historian and writer Doris Kearns Goodwin.  A masterful and exciting book, it covers the time of the great expansion of the American middle-class, and devotes as much time to Eleanor as to Franklin. 

     We’ve both read Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia and Steinbeck’s Travels with Charley, for me this was visiting with old friends.  Amira just finished re-reading Autobiography of a Yogi and The Girl with the Pearl Earring. For comedy, Nothing’s Sacred and I’m Dreaming of a Black Christmas by Lewis Blaack are winners. We highly recommend the new novel by Dr. Abraham Verghese, Cutting for Stone, set in Ethiopia and New York.  As a doctor, this book said so much about what caring means to healing.

     Amira read a trilogy by Sylvie Nickels, who we stayed with in Oxfordshire.  The first book is titled No Ordinary Love.  The trilogy is set in a small English village in Oxfordshire and Serejevo, Serbia.  The characters are inviting, it moves along well, it’s  a page-turner.  Amira really liked it, and we bought the other two books as soon as she finished the first – you really don’t want it to be over! Highly recommended.  Available at Amazon in paperback or for Kindle e-book.

     We both wanted to bone-up on anarchism after our time with the indignados in Spain, so we read Emma Goldman, Thoreau, Noam Chomsky, and Bertrand Russell.   I even leafed around in Bakunin and Proudhon and reviewed The Rebel by Camus.  I did a study-review of the violent French Revolution, which so influenced Marx in the direction of violence, perhaps one reason of he overlooked the power of non-violence.

     Now we’ve just finished The Harvard Psychedelic Club, Amira reading it aloud to me.  It’s a deep reflection on the sixties.  We get the International Herald Tribune  and the New Yorker– highly recommended for in depth reporting --on our Kindle e-book readers, along with the San Francisco Chronicle, which allows us to keep up with the Giants in baseball and the Bay Area in general.

     From Digne-les Bains we drive across southeastern France all day to reach the delightful and enchanting little mountain village of St.-Martin de Vesubie, perched on the side of a deep, steep valley.  The mountain roads through gorges and cliffs are downright freaky, we we’re so glad to pull into the first campground we come to, perched on the side of the valley in a fruit orchard, with a rushing river just below. 

     Here's how it looks to us:

San Martin-Vesubie

San Martin-Vesubie

     It’s only a ten-minute climb  to the little village plaza, the only level spot in town.  Here big trees shade the benches and men play bocci, kind of like lagging in marbles, but with peach-sized metal balls. 

     I like to just sit there and soak in the charm and peace of the place, gazing at the dramatic mountains walls and peaks all around, and the folks leading their ordinary lives in this dramatic setting.

Bocci in San Vesubie Plaza

Stream running right through Vesubie

      Here too we find a very old bent-over woman serving all kinds of French and American snacks from a little trailer.  She cannot hide her sweet nature behind her crotchety mask.  If you cannot make yourself understood in French, she snaps at you indignantly.  But friendly customers come to the rescue every time. 

     I loved her from the beginning; Amira soon sees how sweet she is, and insists on helping her put everything away one night.   Then it no longer matters that we cannot speak French, we all laugh together for half an hour.

This girl's ready with
hot dogs or panninis or pizza

     Amira’s in heaven because there are three different patisseries on this plaza, all with their own specialties, all delicious.  You might get tired of us talking about how good French food is, but there was nothing in St.Martin to make us tired of it. 

     We cannot understand much of the menu sometimes – here our waitress one night texts her best friend on her cell-phone to find out the English translation of a word on the menu.   Trying to communicate is a constant opportunity for laughter, and we take full advantage of what could otherwise be a somewhat trying interaction.  We continue to find that laughter is a fail-safe universal language.

     One night up in the village our campsite neighbors, Yappa and Diana from Netherlands, saw us being asked for directions by a French tourist.  They started laughing at the situation and Yappa said to Amira, “You look very French.” 

     They were following a French driver who supposedly knew the way, but then they had to make a U-turn.  Yappa said: “And I’m following a Frenchman!” We cracked up and laughed and laughed, you might have had to be there to fully join in!

      Like many French campground sanitaires – showers, toilets, basins, etc. – despite clearly marked doors for each gender, nobody seems to pay any attention to the the signs.  Amira’s still adjusting to guys walking around in the women’s bathrooms on a daily basis, and it’s still a little wierd for me to be peeing in a male urinal while girls are strolling past.  You can be sure this never happened in Spain, a much more conservative place.  Oh well!  It’s France!

      St.-Martin is the gateway to what the French call the Maritime Alps.  The National Park here, Mercantour, only recently established, is one of the wildest places in Europe.  They still have wolves running around up there, a few in a very large (acres) fenced aea that you can sometimes see.  We drive super-steep narrow roads to get to trailheads by creeks bordered everywhere with wildflowers. 

     Here's a fe photos from our walks around St.Martin Vesubie and Mercantour National Park in the  French, southern "Maritime Alps" --

Trailside flowers Maritime Alps

"No way I'm going up there!"
Eventually Amira did!

     The trails are steep.  For us, they are a lot tougher than the trail-guide makes them sound.  For example, we think “steep and rocky” would better describe the guidebook’s “easy with stone-cut steps.”   True, we notice four or five steps on a bone-jarring 1,500 foot descent in less than two miles.  And this trail was ranked facile –“easy.”  From that, we didn’t dare try “moderate.”  Beware of reading walking guides written by mountain climbers. 

It was worth it!

     In the end, it’s worth the tiredness and soreness it costs to get up to where amazing peaks tower over wild meadows and lakes. We watch chamois, swift sure-footed creatures that suggest a cross between a deer and a goat gamboling about on the cliffs.  Creeks and flowers abound, marmots whistle, I take endless pictures. 

A Chamois -- bounding, jumping
combo of deer and goat

Ahh, lunch at the lake . . .

Lot's of happy faces in this world!

      Too, this is the right place to meet sweet sixties throwbacks traveling for days with backpacks, not the usual thing in European  mountain ranges, where folks tend to stay at high “refuges” overnight – easy on the back, but at a loss to the feeling of wildness.

     When folks think “alps” they think Swiss.  That’s why we decide to stay in the French Alps for the July and August high-season vacation months.  Campgrounds are cheap, beautiful, and uncrowded. 

     The amazing Route des Grande Alpes that winds from Nice to north of Chamonix and Europe’s  highest peak, Mont Blanc,  goes from high pass to high pass over truly hair-raising roads full of hairpin turns and often so narrow somebody has to stop to make it all work out OK.

     The whole time, we seldom get near anything bigger than a large village.  As we enjoy the wonders of one of the several little-known National Parks on the Route, Queyras, we’re again met with surprise that we are taking our vacation here.  Of course, we're doing a bit more than a vacation!

     Here's some pictures along the Grande Route:

Mt. Viso

Parked on the highest
vehicular pass in Europe

The steep, narrow road to the top!

     In France you can pull off the road on a whim and stay almost anywhere, within towns, and out on the highway.  One night we come a little way down from the highest pass in Europe and pull off onto a barely visible dirt track next to an alpine meadow with a creek running through it. 

     I cut the engine.  In the sudden silence, we are home for the night.  he stars and long northern dusk provide faint light, and later the Moon comes uo over a ridge.  

     A few other campers are pulled over here and there along the valley, close enough to make us feel safe, far enough away to make it feel like we’re virtually alone.  In the US, I cannot imagine spending a night in a place like this without backpacking in. 

Our above tree-line home for the night

Can you see Free Flow down there?

Near our campsite

     We spend a good part of the next day here in quiet wonder, walking about, sitting by the creek, being amazed by flowers.  It’s not easy to say good-bye and head on down out of this high mountain wonderland, driving along a cascading stream most of the way.  Yet the wonders of the next day, pictured below, make up for the sense of loss:

Le Gran Route de les Alpes
puts on a great show every day

Our first view of big glaciers --"Les Ecrin"

     We arrive at a little town, Guillestre, and turn into the Alpine Campground.  Here we park under shady trees, plugged into the grid again; there are showers and stores.  This little town is our base for exploring Queyras (kee-rah) National Park. 

GREAT Vietnamese restaurant
in Guillestre

Guillestre, our base for
Queyras National Park

Falls at the edge of Guillestre

This stream becomes the water fall

     From our campground, we are close to great hiking through meadows and along rivers.  We see a famous castle on a big high rock by a river.

Castle gateway to Queyras

Every mountain village
has a fountain

Cold and sweet!

Milk Maid

Sawright!

You can drink the water

     We visit “Europe’s highest village,” and it feels like we're already in Switzerland, yet this is still southern France:

     Still in Queyras Park, we drive up to a high pass on the French-Italian border.  The views, including the highest mountain in the area, Mt. Viso, are amazing. 

      The big thrill here is dozens of above-tree-line miniature flowers. We get crazy taking pictures all afternoon.  All these flowers live above tree line.  As you will see, they are truly exquisite!  Add in  a few more mountain views, a view looking far down upon sheep grazing by a lake, and the statue-goddess who blesses this unique pass between France and Italy -- enjoy the photos!

Mt. Viso

At the Col Agnel pass,
in two countries at once

Equally dramatic in sun or shade

All these flowers are along
this trail -- miniatures!

The road to Italy -- narrow,
no center line, no fences

A miracle inspired this
"refugio" at this high pass

Mt. Viso up close

That's a rock on the ridge!

No comparisons, we loved these the most!

    After hikes, we treat ourselves to a hotel dinners of pizza, spaghetti, or one night fondue.  These are rare treats since most of the time we “self-cater.”  We always have more than enough to eat despite splitting one meal between us. In France, we order with complete confidence that the food will be memorably delicious.

           One night in Guillestre we are savoring the best Vietnamese food ever, having a good time with the friendly owner, when big explosions go off right outside.  We run out during dessert to see amazing patterns of light bursting across the sky --  fireworks!  They are right up close and so beautiful!  

     This is a sweet little town.  The mayor’s office provides free internet, it seems there’s always some sort of music or celebration going on in the plaza, and five minutes of driving outside town lead us to an amazing waterfall going hundreds of feet over a cliff by fields of wildflowers along a creek.   We get into a giggle fit with a table full of kids by the ice cream shop.  We walk around at night feeling utterly safe.  We stay here ten days. I am almost shocked when I learn it has been that long, it felt so timeless.

     From our campsite in Guillestre, we look into the distance and see giant mountains with glaciers.   These are truly intimidating looking mountains.  High vertical rock faces with rivers of ice coming down.  It doesn’t look like comfortable walking country at all!  A flyer advertises a cable car up into these giants, and we head for La Grave to have a look at Ecrin National Park.

Our first views of real glaciers

     On the way we get to the top of another high pass and pull over.  There’s a sign pointing to a path up a hill to an Alpine Botanical Garden.  Sounds fabulous!    And it is: two thousand species of wildflowers from mountains around the world.  There goes our afternoon!  We’re ecstatic.  We love flowers more than mountains!  Enjoy the photos!

     At dusk we camp near another glacier-fed rushing river within walking distance of the cable car up “La Meije.”  This peak is a fantastic pointed tower into the heavens-- it looks mythical. 

We camped by the green field by the river

And looked up to this!

     The next day the cable car swings us up thousands of feet along glaciers, cascades, and vertical rock faces, depositing us in a precariously small alpine meadow above tree line.  We get truly intimate views of ice and glaciers above, the valley below, and the amazing peak called La Miegie.  Enjoy the ride!

Feels like flying!
Aerial views follow!

Some folks walk up!

Glacier falling over the edge

Crevasse!

La Meige

The very top!

Tiny beings on the glacier

Even smaller

A village across the valley

Our campground is down there

      It’s so straight up and down that we can look down to a little white dot that we realize is actually Free Flow the Van parked by the river. We ride down and cook ourselves a delicious pasta dinner by the river.  Sleep is sweet.  Here's a few photos near our camp.

     We have another tough and beautiful pass to go over the next afternoon, but we come to a sudden stop after I accidentally put gasoline instead of diesel fuel in poor Free Flow’s tank.  Only a few miles up a mountain road Free Flow coughs and sputters to a stop amidst a cloud of white smoke.   Sorry, no photos!

      It’s traumatic for our poor van and for us.  Wow!  We’re on a steep road by a cliff.  Fortunately we can walk back to town a mile or so. We come to the fire station, where a call is placed to a tow truck.  We sleep again that night by a rushing river, our camping spot the back lot of a Fiat dealership, where everything is straightened out in the morning,  our wallets considerably lightened by towing charges and the loss of a tank of fuel.  Ouch!

     One of the interesting footnotes to this story is that we were near the only town of any size we’d seen since Barcelona, we were near Italy and the only Fiat dealership we’ve seen on the whole trip.  It worked out so simply when it could have been a much more complicated hassle. 

     Early the next afternoon, Free Flow heads up the same road again. At least everything works, and some things that had stopped working, work again.  Our horn works – an essential for Italy coming up – and a left-turn signal, a basic safety item, is working again.  We drive over another unbelievable pass, on equally unbelievable roads – possibly a good thing we got stopped the night before, had no idea how wild an area we were headed toward, and how challenging the driving.  We drive down the pass in pouring rain, the first in quite a while. 

On the road again!

In France, hundreds of folks ride
bicycles over steep mountain passes!

On the Road, on and on it goes

Mile after mile of switchbacks!

Time for a break. 
That's a cascade in the background

Here's the cascade

     The rain signals our entry into the northern alps. When it stops, our favorite mascot on this journey, a rainbow, bids us a good journey onwards.  We’re still in a bit of shock about coming to a stop in a cloud of white smoke.  There’s something about that rainbow that feels very good.  It’s a reminder that everything already is, in some way unknown to our little minds, already good.

Another very high pass!

\

We loved this rainbow

    

Our campsite that night is sweet shelter.  We find it easily, a creek gurgles by, we sleep deeply, the young mistress of the place has hot chocolate for Amira in the morning.  We head out over another amazing pass, this time on better roads to the Italian border, but narrow and steep again on the Italian side.   First we go up and up and up, switchback after switchback, and then down and down and down, so many super slow tight turns, into the little botiquey resort town of Courmayeur.    

     This flower-bedecked village lies at the foot of a massive grey wall of rock whose top is lost in dark grey clouds – the wall is the south side of the  Mont Blanc massif, so big it creates its own weather. 

First view of Europe's highest,
Mont Blanc hidden in storm clouds

First view of Mt. Blanc Massif,
from the Ityalian town of Courmayeur

Statue in Courmayeur

     We walk around, munch pizza on a park bench. Here we strike up a conversation, aided by our phrasebook, with an older Italian gentleman who has been parked there while the girls shop.  Walking back to the van, we eat gelato and find a hand-made pasta shop and buy some wonderful cheese and beef tortellini to cook the next day.

     Since we don’t speak Italian, I go outside to point at what we want though the window.  It’s not working.  Finally,  Amira, inside, says “Tortellini!”  Everyone is so relieved to know what we wanted, there’s laughter all around.  Who knew that you say “tortellini” for “tortellini” in Italian?  We thought we couldn’t speak Italian!  Turns out we do!

     By that time, we had even remembered, with a little help from our friends, Bonjourno for “Good Day” or “Hello,” Ciao and Arrivaderci for Good-Bye, Grazie for Thank You,” and Prego for “Your Welcome.”  We figure the language comes with the pasta, gelato, and pizza -- it’s that easy!

     It’s time to drive straight toward Mont Blanc.  It has begun to rain again.  Chamonix is on the other side.  There will never be a road over this mountain!  Instead a tunnel, many miles long, has been drilled through it, perhaps ten-thousand feet below its ever-snowy cap.  On the other side, we stop for the international border, where some flags are blowing in the rain.

      We drive on down and shortly find ourselves in Chamonix. Here it’s the last weekend of the summer season, there’s a big bicycle race in town, and we see more folks and cars than we’ve seen anywhere in a very long time. 

     This is the most famous mountaineering town in the world, and it feels a bit like Yosemite Valley.  We know it’s the last crowd of the year though, that’s how we planned it.   By Monday, it’s September and things are much quieter.

     We settle in at one of the first campgrounds we see, called Mer de Glace – it really is at the foot of a glacier called “Sea of Ice.”  It’s raining as dusk falls. In the morning, the rain has cleared. and all the giant peaks are dusted with fresh, gleaming snow. Here's what they looked like right from our valley campsite, no kidding!

Les Drus, "The Thick"
-- from our Chamonix camp

Mt. Blanc is under the
pile of snow in the middle

Yes, "thick" for a needle-pinnacle!

     Well folks, that's it for this post.  I'm writing to you now from Italy, near Rome.  This is the first good upload connection I've had for photos since Madrid.  I hope to take advantage of it tomorrow to post again, re our time in Chamonix, our journey through Switzerland, and the giant peaks of the Jungfrau, Eiger, and Mönch near Interlaken, not to mention the Matterhorn.  Truly amazing mountains and ice!  More soon, my friends!