Gorging ourselves (terrible pun)

Okay post two. hour two in this little stone and clay brightly painted hole in the wall we discovered: The internet Cafe, in the backstreets of Salavas, the town just over the bridge from Vallon. French/spanish/folk/punjabi influenced sounds drift up the stairs to our little sony loft, carried on the back of the scent of French cuisine. . . I mean FRENCH cuisine. The smell of something frying in a spiced oil probably a pastry of some sort included, and definitely some garlic in there. The church bells ring, and I try to figure out how to get these pictures up and connect them with a string of words. Behind, in front, and all around the young manager, probably a climber in his spare time with his 3/4 length pants, tan, clean shave and pony tail hustles and bustles trying to keep everything going without looking unrelaxed. One of the activities this camp runs is gorging. There's a gorge that is a completely dried up riverbed of bright white limestone. It takes all day to make your way through and has incredible formations to scramble up, rappel down, swim across and just gawk at. When the sun hits it right it's an absolute reflector oven, and the only sign of civilization is the low altitute training runs that the French Mirage jets fly over our heads ever 10 minutes or so. Incredibly fast, so that by the time you hear them, they're usually out of sight, and always in formation. There are no real hazards other than rocks and gravity to worry about. Not on a Canadian scale anyway. The vipers and adders are resonably non-poinsonous, and there are no bears. The wild boars are docile unless cornernered, thought they enter the bivouac sites by almost the hundreds at night. There is the occasional scorpion though - the climate being what it is. The Gorge has one really cool feature known as the birthing hole. It is said that after your first time passing through it, you gain another name. Don't know what mine is though. The birthing hole is a bore right through a section of limestone that looks too small for a human to pass through, but isn't. Even I fit through it. The shot is of Pete, my small Aussie Tent mate being born. I had to say I was pretty nervous about getting stuck. It's not the kid of thing the jaws of life can get you out of. It is said that there are over 2000 caves in the Ardeche. The canyon walls that surround the river are permeated with holes, and most of them seem to lead much further into the cliff than one first imagines, and many pop out somewhere else, after hours of crawling and subterranean climbing. Pete, John, and Ward, 3 guys from the camp here went with me into a cave just up the road here and the end of it was 15 feet over the street. Luckily a German couple here had strung a rope just in front of the opening so we could lower ourselves down, as the climb was hairy at best. We also did a cave as a staff which had waist deep pools of freezing water below a one foot ceiling. Not for the claustrophobic. Caving is a rush, and the bautiful cave formations add to the scenery. No pictures of caving yet.

2 Paddlers from Britain came down and for the last 6 days showed us the ropes on paddling the ardeche. People were from various levels of experience, some with none, and by the end everyone was a whitewater soloist. Quite an intensive training session. The ardeche is surrounded by canyon walls, hundreds of feet high which are always present, looming, and imposing, right to the end of the trip. The river turns brighter and brighter green as it progresses and the limestone chalks it up.

We had a blast trying moves, surfing waves, and giving and taking advice the whole way through. The Descent only takes 2 days, so we did it twice, once witha view to paddling technique and practice, the second time with a view to river safety and placing of staff along a rapid. It was hard to take my eyes off the sky. At night we bivouacked at a site where everyone stays. The Ardeche runs through anational park so to regulate pollution and flood dangers there are 2 places you can camp. We left our food boxes at ground level the first night, and the rumours of the wild pigs proved true as we witnessed our breakfast spread through the dirt. The boars had made short work of our yogourt. There were some highlights of our trip. Like this moment of (almost) solitude that I managed to grab (2-6000 people can descend the ardeche in one day during peak season,. ouch, I know).

Another highlight os the raft of canoes we made. Apparently a tradition on this section of the river. So that's it, tomorrow the kids come and ruin our fun. Hopefully our team is ready for them. The river is a beautiful place and we are filled with memories of playing in the rapids and battling warm and cold alternating weather and shifty headwinds (through the hallways of the gorge). Now we are taking it easy on our day off in preparation. I better go back to eating this flute before my internet time runs out. Leave a comment, send a sign of existence. We're in a bubble down here!





Here we are, from left to right hailing from Lindsay, California, Germany, Guelph, Edmonton. Yeah it's a Canada party. There are more of us. Some are from australia, Sweden, Britain. Some have been away from home over a year, passing through Romania, Germany, Tahoe, etc. It's an eclectic mix and some people's english is tinted with hints of everything from american to british, mixed with foreign expressions and foreign prosody and intonation. That's what happens when you're travelling I guess. . .