FRENCH DINING

                                  Dining the French Way

     After biking all day dinnertime was a time to relax. The French dinner hour tends to be late, most often after 7:00 PM. For them dining is an event. We never had a dinner that lasted less than  two hours, and often it approached three hours at the table.

    Normally drinks, including water, are never included with  a meal overseas. If one asks for water chances are it will be a $3  bottle of water. So it was a pleasant surprise the first evening in Bordeaux to have wine served with our duck dinner.

    As it turned out we had plenty of wine every evening!  Of course we were in wine country where wines are extremely reasonable. But we also had the big boss along as our guide.  He came as a temporary sub for an injured guide, but after a couple of days the driver was emphatic that he must remain for the entire two weeks so as not to traumatize us—ha!  It turned out to be a great advantage. I guess the small boutique hotels we stayed in were just taking care of the boss  or were saying thank you for all the business he brought them. I’m guessing he never even saw the rather large bar bills.

    The service was generally slow in comparison to US standards. The food was generally good, and the company and conversation were most pleasant. Those evening meals were a great way to wind down after a busy and full day of biking and sight-seeing.

    A bottle of wine just about fills four glasses. The fellows on the trip were not a bit hesitant about holding up an empty bottle in the air  to be replaced. The wines were excellent and flowed freely the entire trip---without costing us bikers a single penny!

LAKE TITICACA

                                             A High Altitude City

  Puno, located on the Andean plateau is dominated by Lake Titicaca, sacred place of the Incas and home to natural and artificial islands. Titi means puma and caca means stone.   The Incas thought Lake Titicaca was shaped somewhat like a puma, but after looking at a map, I thought that took a lot of imagination. The highest navigable lake in the world is 100 miles long and covers 3200 square miles. The depth ranges from 15-20 to 900-feet deep with the northern end of the lake  the deepest. The altitude and hot sun cause a tremendous amount of evaporation.  Titicaca, located between Peru and Bolivia, is the largest lake in South America.

     Spanish founded Puno in 1668 because of its closeness to the colonial silver mine of Laykakota. The altitude is 12,565-feet above sea level and the greater  area population is 102,800. Its inhabitants are proud of their Quechua and Aymara past. Many inhabitants, especially women, daily wear colorful traditional dress

    Puno is a small port city where the main industry is tourism.  Agriculture and cattle raising are important and the area is well known for its herds of llamas and alpacas. The main crops are potato, quinoa  and other tubers, but limited access to fertilizers and seeds means low yields allowing only for subsistence farming.

    Smoke from unvented fires wafts through Puno’s streets, along with edgy waves of traffic with constant  honking horns including taxis and three-wheeled cycles that urge pedestrians to the narrow slivers of sidewalks. It is not a pedestrian friendly city.  Puno’s churches are characterized by their distinctive colonial architecture. Several plazas provide shops and restaurants.

    Rural population struggles with poverty where surviving is the main priority, illiteracy is high at 22% and higher among females than males. Health and malnutrition are related to extreme poverty, lack of clean water and sanitation infrastructure..

    The big attraction for tourists visiting Puno is the Eros people and their floating islands which were once their homes. More about them on another day

GONDOLAS in VENICE

                                          A Must-do Activity

      Before I left for Europe the first time I was determined to have a gondola ride in Venice—one of those must to do things—and I didn’t care what it cost. My travel partner felt the same way about getting to the Moulin Rouge in Paris. So we made a deal: we  would  accompany each other on each other’s to do list—tit for tat, if you will!

    The  gondoliers are all native sons and often the job is passed on from father to son. However, they all have to pass several tests, among them swimming, driving and language tests. They are easy to spot in their navy and white stripped tee shirts.

    Many times of the day the  canals are crowded with gondolas—of many kinds—so one of the best times for a ride is during the dinner hour when most people are eating. To be serenaded costs extra.

     We hopped on a gondola one evening and ventured down much of the seven miles of the canals. Actually the  Great Road of Water consists of 170 canals and connect the 180 islands making up Venice. Our gondolier had a marvelous voice and serenaded us all evening. Of course the songs were in Italian, but one could understand they were love songs. They have their own repertoire and do not take requests, or at least ours didn’t.

    Our hotel was off the mainland ,on an island so our room faced  the canal. Every night after retiring I lay in my bed with the window open and listened to the boat traffic and the  wonderful serenading going on below.

     For most just the name Venice conjures up visions romance, canals, art and palaces. There are no roads, so no cars. All traffic is by boat or on foot. Although flat the many alleyways and bridges in the city make it easy to get lost.

    Besides the popular gondolas, there are canal taxis, which is how we got to our hotel, and  canal barges to transport goods, produce and luggage, Venice is a  fabulous city to visit and we had a wonderful time.

An Extended Hike

                                                 A Long Hour

     Standing in the clouds at 10,627-feet up,  we played in the snow for a bit, like a bunch of kids, at the top of a glacier in Switzerland.  It was not as cold as I expected, but after a while we went inside and visited a 427-foot long ice cave.  Built between 1974-’78 the temperature is constant at 30-31 degrees. The ice  is 15-50 meters deep and there are several rooms in the cave. This is where it was cold and when we were done a visit to the café provided us a chance to drink a hot liquid of our choice.

     Warmed up, we rode the gondola down to the first level where we hiked a well maintained trail around small Lake Trubsee. We stopped several times to learn the names of the many alpine plants in bloom.

    About three-quarters way around the lake a path led off to the right and the sign said Engleberg. The Swiss do not mark mileage, instead  they talk about  the time needed to make a destination. This sign read one hour.

    Five or six of us decided to be smart and take the shortcut.  It didn’t take long to realize the foot path was a cow path and very muddy in spots as it wound around large boulders. We climbed up and down over slippery rocks sloshing about in the mud.

    A few hundred meters into the path I seriously thought about turning back as I really wasn’t into playing mountain goat. But it looked better up ahead so we trudged on---for the next 2 ½ hours.  The trail alternated to fairly decent in areas, then turned mucky again. When we finally hit level ground,  as in a narrow paved road, several of us were ready to pay some farmer to get us back to the train station. Since there was no farmer or motor vehicle of any kind  in sight we had no choice but to walk on.

    Rounding the last turn in the road I could see the gondola station. I shouted, “There it is! I can’t believe we all safely made it with no mishaps.” 

     The two who had elected to ride the gondola to ground level were sitting at a picnic table waiting for  us smart-alecks who took the sign as gospel!

    It was really rugged, and it was obvious our guide had not hiked that trail in a very long time.

In hindsight a few years later and after many more trails, easy and tough, it was probably not as rugged as we thought at the time as much as it was a surprise and the realization that we hadn’t been so smart after all!

A Drunken Walk

                                   Long Suspension Bridge

     In Vancouver, Canada I could not resist walking across the longest suspension bridge in the world.  At  230-feet above the rushing Capilano River the 450-foot long bridge swayed with dizzying vigor. The wind swooped down to snare a man’s hat off his head carrying it like a floating balloon over the valley.

     The setting for this steel suspension bridge is in a temperate rain forest in British Columbia, Canada.  Many timid visitors watched as others stepped onto and walked drunkenly across the ravine. I compared it much like walking on a tightrope.

     A Scotsman by  the name of Mackay was so impressed with the beauty of the area that in 1888 he bought 6000 acres spanning both sides of the river.  The following year he suspended a hemp rope and cedar plank footbridge across the deep ravine.

    The bridge became quite an attraction and in 1903 a more secure wire bridge was built. Over the century the bridge was sold four times and the fourth and present steel cable bridge was built in 1956 with 13 tons of concrete firmly anchoring the cables in place on each end of the bridge. In 1962  hurricane Freda uprooted 82 large trees in the park with eight of them falling on the footbridge, but caused no damage!

    On the other side of the  swaying bridge I hiked several of the nature trails through the rainforest. Excellent interpretive signs, with delightful imaginative art work were informative. On successive trips to Vancouver I always make my way to Capilano to again cross the bridge.

On one trip there was a story pole carver on the premises who was happy to answer questions and explain his craft and the history of story poles.

    With no wind blowing it is  quite an easy walk. No matter what the weather, the lovely park-like forest on the far side is worth the walk, swaying and wobbly or not.