After a fairly miserable night- at least for me – huddled in my small tent with all of my worldly goods to keep them out of the rain, I struggled out of my bag and tent, both clinging like an undersized girdle and packed most everything up. Except the tent, which was, of course, very wet. Shook it out and left it up. We went to the camp showers – which were pretty good. I was highly entertained to find that my wheel of brie was still in my jacket pocket. Amusing only myself, I had to take a picture at the camp bath-house with my brie – as if all French people take their brie to the shower with them (see picture). We went into the camp office for coffee. It was E2.40 per cup (which was twice what we paid the day before). Then of to the grocery store – it was nice to have nibbles (cheese, of course! and fruits) and not worry about finding an open restaurant.
We drove to Font de Gaume, which we had noted the day before. It is one of the few cave sights where the paintings are in color. They severely restrict the number of visitors per day though and we didn’t get in line early enough to be one of the lucky few. (We’ll have to come back!) So we went to the PIP (Pole International de Pre-history) museum in the little town of Les Eyzies. They had displays that put all of the eras and human evolutionary species in order. Then we walked over the Museum of National Pre-history where we spent a very long time there reading about the various discoveries and eras. There were many tools and spear-heads and stuff.
The main event for the day – for the trip! – for the lifetime! was to visit Lascauex. We were waiting for their 2p opening and got tickets for the 2:30 tour in English. A dream come true for Pam. The ‘Sistine chapel ceiling’ of pre-history. You get to go inside the recreated cave that they call Lasceaux 2. They went to a great deal of trouble to recreate the dimensions, contours, walls and ceilings of the cave and then painstakingly recreated each of the pictures. This is because people coming and going were bringing bacteria and too much CO2 and pollen and other destructive materials in and the cave and paintings were being ruined. This way we can all see it and it is preserved for posterity. A commendable effort. We did walk up the hill to the original site, but they have it locked up tight. There is a little statue of “Robot” the dog who found the cave. (We have a picture of that.)
Our ticket to Lascaux covered Le Thot also, which is an outdoor museum of living creatures from prehistoric time. We wandered around and to see the aurochs, ibix and deer. Pam petted a deer. These have been dna-recreated as they were in pre-history (cloned, I guess).
This museum has some exhibits of cave paintings, information and also a cute little video about the history of climate change.
Then it was off to find our campground near Sarlat, which is a quite famous little “Medeival village”. Along the way, as has become our wont, we stopped at another couple of closed places. One was Abri de Cap Blanc where there are friezes of horses. There was one outside – Pam and I tried to steal it (see picture). Then we walked around at a little site where a village was recreated and sort of broke in. Pam collected walnuts and we looked around. They probably do presentations there, likely for school children. So then we hiked back to the car and zipped off to the campground before it got dark.
We had a reservation for a tent site but Susan had a stubborn determination to rent a cabin. This campground had several choices. We went with the cheapest one because Pam and Rob were so offended that we were spending any money at all on comforts. It’s not that they can’t afford it, I think they might be a little bit crazy. <smile> Thrilled to settle in to the tiny space with our own bathroom and our own kitchen and our own tiny little rooms, we hauled everything in (glory of glories we would be staying two nights!) We decided that we had enough groceries so we just stayed put and snacked on our fruit and cheese and wine.
