I want to give her the benefit of the doubt because she is my wife. I will attribute it to just waking up and not having a fully functional brain. I’m sure it has nothing whatsoever to do with her being blond–in fact, the longer we are hiking, the less blond and more gray she is becoming. When she opened her eyes this morning, she said “Look at the sun shining in our window.” It was, in fact, the moon.
While we were having our breakfast, the owner came back in and was cleaning. She was much more friendly today. I guess the lesson is to never judge based upon first impressions. I know the first impression most people have of me is that I’m an assh…bad example. Just don’t judge based upon first impressions.
Like 99.9% of people, the first question she asked when she discovered we were Americans–“Trump?” Shoulder shrug and hanging head is the best response I have. It’s amazing how I’ve never met a Trump supporter in a foreign country–I guess they are all back home making America great again and don’t have time to travel outside of the USA (or think there is any need to travel outside of the USA).
The owners left to go for a hike before we were out of the place. It’s amazing how lackadaisical the French are towards money. I have actually walked out of a gite without paying and no one came after me. In the US, we don’t even get a key to a room until we pay; in France, we get a room, drinks, meals, extras and no one even asks if or how we can pay. I have yet to find a locked outer door in a gite or refuge. More often, like yesterday, we just walk in and grab a beer while we are waiting. I know there are large areas at home (more rural in scope) that operate with similar “honesty” policies. It’s just very refreshing to be a foreigner and still have automatic trust given.
Our focus today was get to Py and find a shop. It was only 3 miles up and over a pass into Py. We were in town by 11:30 thinking that if there was a shop, it would be closed for lunch from 12:30 to 2. What a pleasant surprise we had. A young woman is running a 3 room auberge with a restaurant open to the public and an epicure on the ground floor–she’s a one woman operation with a toddler in tow. She is cleaning up in Py.
We went into the epicure and started picking out foods we wanted. In between serving customers upstairs (and doing all the fresh cooking), she came down and totaled our bill and told us we could wait to pay by card if we wanted to have some lunch. We did want lunch. Even with all the beer last night, we are still running a pretty good calorie deficit. We ordered burgers, fries, salads, colas, desserts, and coffees. We gladly paid whatever she wanted as she calmed our food uncertainty and filled our bellies with an excellent meal. She didn’t gouge us at all and she could have since she was the only player within 10 miles. Instead, she was doing a brisk business with lots of customers.
I’ve been surprised that gite owners look upon backpackers as competitions to their business instead of a source of supplemental business. In the US, an owner of a country hostel would have figured out he could sell dehydrated meals to hikers and would start expanding his business. Here, most gite owners see backpackers as lost revenue because they are not paying for a bed at night and meals (which would average about 50 Euros/night–way out of the range of the younger crowd and the escapee Americans). I realize the gite owners are working hard to scrape a living out of a small crowd, but they could learn to expand their income base. Just an outsider’s observation.
More ear worms today. This time it was the Eurythmics. It is only natural that it would be a French theme since cheese is so much a part of daily life here. “Sweet dreams are made of cheese. Who am I to dis a bris?”
After our 2.5 hour grocery/lunch break, we decided we did have to move on. Today was the 6th day in a row where we have hiked the itinerary in it’s entirety. Either we are getting stronger or we want to finish the trail and move on. We only had another 6 miles after lunch which was predominately uphill. The guidebook said this was a popular destination tonight, but didn’t give any reason why.
There are lots of reasons why. We walked several miles next to a man-made mountain stream. It was amazing to imagine the amount of work it took to make and maintain this stream. Large pipes transport the water around washes to continue the stream. I would like to find out more about this and how it came to be, but my language skills are hindering me again.
When we got to the refuge, we ran into a French couple from Norther France. They’ve been hiking the GR10 in sections for 4 years and are planning to finish the same as us next Thursday. We also met a couple of young German men from eastern Germany who decided to drive to Banyuls and then take a bus to Py to hike back to their car.
Since we were so late arriving, they opened another dorm room and we were the only ones in it (see Pete, it still pays to be slow–try it sometime). After we cooked our supper outside on one of the picnic tables, we came back in to find 3 other people had come in even later than us. With any luck, none of them snore. We had already chosen our beds strategically by the window so we are in control of the room temperature–snore and we freeze you out.
