Day 15 to 16: Downtime

We were over two weeks through the trip and we certainly felt it in our bodies. The minimal rest days and three nights camping were catching up with us. (Okay, fine, Saturday night’s party was fun and kept us up until 2am). It was also time to say goodbye to Team North Face – all the athletes and helpful people who made Miel and I feel so welcome.

To top it off, James parted ways with us before doing the 7-hour drive from Lauterbrunnen back to Connaux, so it wasn’t exactly our favorite part of the trip.

TNF Athletes and Staff

Photo op with our new friends from UK.
They're already planning their visit to the PH!

Goodbye hugs!

But the journey went on, as we take the highs with the lows. Caro did a tag team with Miel behind the wheel, while I stayed awake for them both as the talker (to keep them awake) and navigator (credit to Waze and the car’s GPS). We had a quiet dinner along the road before hitting home past 10pm.

The next day, Caro drove to Montpelier (one hour away) for a radio talk show, while Miel and I stayed home to recover. It was a chill day, just taking it easy and doing clean-up. I wrote on this blog, Miel probably played COC ;) We did laundry of all the stuff we used during the festival, and re-packed all the tents and sleeping bags that we left out to dry the night before.

There was something that perked us up, however: Preparing a Filipino meal for Caroline.

This involved us having to drive out to the nearest grocery using their camper van that was low on gas (so we mustn't get lost and run out of fuel), and searching for the right meat cuts and condiments. It sounds simplee enough, I know. But try zeroing in on an adobo’s ingredients when you’re surrounded by a hundred varieties of cheese, wine, and Lindt chocolates, and you’ll find it takes quite an amount of discipline!

Completing our checklist of ingredients wasn’t all that straightforward, either, with bay leaves costing much more than expected, and cane vinegar non-existent on the shelf. There were multiple brands and flavors of balsamic vinegar, there was apple cider vinegar, and rainbow colors of wine vinegar, but no cane! I also tried to buy a different brand of soy sauce than what was in Caro’s cupboard (only to find out later that it still tasted like Kikkoman).

Sosyal! Naka-bote yung itong dahon :D

aka Kikkoman

Closest-looking thing to cane vinegar in Carrefour.
Everything else was of a darker shade!

Fast forward to three hours later, back at the house, the scent of vinegar floated its way to the uppers floors from the kitchen, and Miel started to worry. He tasted the adobo and found it too sour for his taste. He opened all the windows to let out the smell. Meanwhile, I added some water to lessen the acidity, and crossed my fingers that the adjustments will work out well.

When Caro arrived, we decided to have a bottle of red with our Filipino fare of adobo, chopped tomatoes, scrambled egg and rice. Voila! The dish was a hit. Caro enjoyed it, even if for me, it had a distinct, tangy aftertaste not present in our adobos. It turned out, the vinegar we used was made of wine, and sniffing its bottle alone, one can already tell how much sharper the acidity bites.

Caro doesn’t seem to mind, though, as she helped herself to an extra serving. Miel and I were satisfied too. We migrated our conversations into the living room, lit the fireplace, and opened another bottle of wine.

Adobo with a French twist!

Before we knew it, it was way past our bed time. Bonne nuit!

Day 2 to 3: Everything Is New

It’s the most obvious point of attention, and without doubt, one that piques my interest all the time: The landscapes. As soon as the plane flew over Paris, I couldn’t help but admire the large patches of green punctuating the city. In the train to Valence, I watched open fields and mountain silhouettes on the window. And as we drove to the crags, vineyards and olive tree plantations were as abundant as coconut trees in the Philippines. They were just everywhere.

These two days for me were as much about experiencing the new climbing styles as it was taking in all the new-ness of being in this area of France. The peacefulness and quietness of a small village, the days that start late and end late, the fresh cold air that gets locked inside a stone house.

Driving 5-10km out of Connaux could already take you to your nearest climbing area (La Capelle), through narrow but well-paved, bending roads that let cars run 60-90km per hour. There seems to be dozens of kinds of road signs to remember, and everyone follows them, down to the 50km speed limit when you’re inside a village.

Driving 50km will take you to even more crags (in our case, in Mouries). Going further out boasted more greeneries, wide flowing rivers, and quaint villages that all look like they’re over 300 years old because of all the stone and brick finishes. Hill tops are almost always crowned with a castle, and always made me do a double take.

So it was just to my excitement that we could easily check out one of these ruins, which we did after a day in Mouries. And that’s one of the coolest things, too. Because the sun doesn’t set until 8pm, and there is no traffic to get from Point A to B, we could drive for just 10 minutes, hike for another 10, and be on the very top of some century-old structure. Oh, getting to the top includes some low-ball wall climbing because some part of the stairs have been destroyed.

Ah, but we are here for climbing, right? ;)

Mouries was actually Day 2, and it’s an old limestone crag that sticks out for looking like hardbound books forced to stand on their spines. The faces are flat like a book cover, too, and, as expected from these smooth faces, are favorable to those with strong fingers. The routes were a crimp fest, but because it stays in the shade for the whole day, the tiny features had nice friction.

Another new and interesting thing to see were the old type of hangers on the rock. They were old-style bolts that were hand-drilled! So the protection came slightly fewer in between, because you can imagine how much work would go into drilling in one bolt.

La Capelle was climbing day number three, and to our surprise, it’s a 5-minute drive with excellent sandstone bouldering. Miel and I can’t help but be amazed by how convenient the climbing area is, because you can park right in the middle of the village, by the church, and walk 5 minutes up and be in the middle of 10-15 foot boulders.

The boulders aren’t too high that everything's under the trees (decent shade), the landings are flat, and there’s a good variety of styles to choose from, from slabs and roofs to pinchy and crimpy problems. We tried problems that had slopers and open holds, and they would stick, just because there was enough granules (and possibly, relatively good conditions) that would bite into our skins.

The boulders have interesting names, such as the Elephant Rock and Lion Rock, named so because the rocks really look like faces of the animals. And yes, the rocks are even properly labeled with signs and the trails interspersed with symbol and color-coded markers; so even without a topo or guidebook, we could easily spend days here and not run out of things to do.

We ended Day 3 by visiting Pont du Gard, a historical landmark and apparently a UNESCO heritage site. It’s an ancient masterpiece: An aqueduct built in 50 AD (the 1^st century!!!), built by the Romans at that time to supply water to the city of Nimes. To get an idea of its majesty, the original construction ran 50 km long, and stands 50 m high, built from limestone blocks that is plentiful in the region (no wonder there is so much climbing here, ha!) Or maybe a better scale reference: The biggest arch of the aqueduct stands 25 m high. And that’s just ONE arch!

With our new friend and tour guide for the day,
local climber extraordinaire, Coralie

Safe to say that that’s already a lot to take in for two days, and we’re only getting started.