les gorges du toulourenc

j'ai vu thibault en fin de semaine et il a pu me donner les photos qu'il avait prises de dimanche dernier, lors de notre sortie aux gorges du toulourenc. les voici les voilà! mais avant, retour à samedi, avec une photo close-up de la fameuse cigale invisible. pouvez-vous la voir maintenant?!

le toulourenc est un cours d'eau qui devient très, très bas en été, de telle manière qu'on peut le remonter à pied. le niveau de l'eau peut varier, couvrant le pied ou tout le corps. il y a parfois des grosses roches qui barrent le chemin, et c'est là que ça devient vraiment amusant car il faut les surmonter et les escalader! i felt like the lost boys in neverland trying to escape captain hook! there were a few times where i got genuinely frightened (what if i slip and crack my head open!?), but the adrenaline rush was awesome!!

au début c'est un peu plus pépère; on est encore habillé!

le débit commence à augmenter un peu! here i am, considering my options...

on s'est apporté un pique-nique qu'on a mangé sur une des petites plages rocheuses; petite sieste bien méritée après!

the water has dug little grottoes in the limestone rock; it's also that limestone that makes the water a nice milky turquoise, kind of like lake louise in alberta.

here's an example of where it got really fun. aude and i are posing like mermaids, but in reality i was a wee bit scared of the torrent below!

thibault at the same spot as we were above, different angle. pleasegoddon'tfall. some yahoos were skipping from rock to slippery rock like freaking water-rabbits (what? water-rabbits? i don't know, some sort of bouncy water animal. frogs? maybe. the point is they knew no fear! no! fear!)

we met some of aude's friends there, l to r: eli, camille, aurore, aude and your's truly, made not as short as usual by the slope we're all standing on!

the next day i woke up totally sore. mostly my arms though, because my legs have been getting some pretty good training since i've been climbing 269 stairs to work everyday. yes, someone counted and there are 269 stairs! considering a flight is about 14 steps, that means i walk up roughly 20 flights every day, and that's not counting the stairs inside the museum! the inters' office is on the 4th floor and the kitchen on the 1st. you do the math.

soon i will regale you with more tales of human VS nature; well, more like tales of moi in awe in front of nature. it's really incredible how many different landscapes there are here, and aside from the alps i had never realized how many mountains there were.

à bientôt, et bonne semaine.