Pictures from Travels part 2

Here are some pictures from PART 2 of my travels, which consists of Lebanon, Greece, and the south of France. After returning from Greece, I realized how much of France I still hadn't seen. Being that I have lived in France since August 2010, I considered this a problem! So, with the help of my French friend Erwan, we took a little tour of the south of France. Since I had already done 6 weeks of traveling, we decided to have a small budget..........so we drove to Meyruis, parked the car there, and then walked 55 km to Avèze. Along the way, we hiked, camped, hitchhiked, and ate the most basic foods, such as bread and dried apricots (if I ever see another dried apricot again, I am going to go insane...)

The view of Meyruis from the hiking trail.

Here is everything we took with us. The tiny blue bag is our tent!

Living off the land! Berries picked along the side of the hiking trail.

Erwan with the heavy backpack and tent. Thank god for French gallantry; I got the lighter backpack :)

Location of First Picnic, where we ate bread, cheese, and condensed milk. Quite nourrishing.

View from higher altitude. It gets prettier and prettier (and colder and colder) as we go up!

Wildlife along the hiking trail.

END OF DAY ONE, at a town called St. Saveur Camprieu

Eating dinner at a bar in Camprieu. Note the numerous tubes of condensed milk.

Our neighbors.

Best campsite ever.

By the end of Day One, we had walked 14,7 km, which isn't that much if you are driving....but when you are walking with heavy backpacks, it is a pretty cool feeling. Needless to say, we were exhausted by the time we reached Camprieu later that evening and were thrilled to find this beautiful field with long, soft grass. The next morning, we doubled back a little bit to visit a place called l'Abîme de Bramabiau, which was a huge cave with an underground river flowing through it. The river was called Bonheur ("happiness"), and it flowed all the way to l'Espérou, which was another city that we ended up walking to!

After our adventure through the caves, we started our walk once again, only to get distracted by the Lac de Bonheur (Happiness Lake). We couldn't resist stopping there, either!!

Day 2 was a day full of distraction. We only walked about 10km because we kept stopping at sites we found interesting and cool. For example, we found wild raspberries growing along the path:

Eventually, we arrived at our destination of Avèze, a municipal camping site 55 km away from our starting point. The people owning the place were Moroccan, so we ended up eating Moroccan tabouli and mechoui. A change from eating bread and cheese was definitely needed! The beautiful scenery in general was well worth the 55 km walk:

Drinking water that flowed straight from Mont Aigual. So fresh and crisp!

Hitchiking back to our car, which was still in Meyruis! It took us 5 hours to get back by car!

All in all, a great first experience. I had never hiked that much before, nor had I ever camped, hitchiked, or lived off of cheese for so long. I can say for certain that this has definitely given me a taste for it, and I will be searching for more experiences like this when I go home. Maybe the Blue Ridge Mountains could be cool after all?