Day 1 (Saturday)
We met at the Dickinson center at 7:00 a.m., a little early for my tastes, and boarded a coach bus. It was about a 2.5 hour drive (during which I slept), and we arrived in the small town of Estarvielle at mid morning. Estarvielle is exactly how you might expect a small French mountain village to be: it has a population of 32 people, is centered around the church, the houses are ancient, and most people drink for fun. Estarvielle's economy is centered around Pyrenean tourism: skiing, hiking, and snowshoeing in the winter; cycling and hiking in the spring and summer. Many of the small villages in the Pyrénées (and there are many dotting the Lourne Valley) farm cows, goats, and sheep, selling their milk, cheese, and wool to the larger towns surrounding the area.
After settling into the hostel in the center of town ("center" is misleading, since from the center you can throw a rock and successfully reach the 'outskirts' of town), we headed up to the village's church with the church caretaker. She explained that this Catholic church was built in 1632 and has been used ever since. When she explained that the sanctuary had great acoustics, the Dickinson program's director, Madame Toux, whipped her head around and looked me right in the eye. "We have someone here who is in an a cappella group, maybe he can give us a taste of the acoustics in here?" Although the word "maybe" was a part of the sentence, judging from her look there was no maybe about it. So, another student who also sings, Sam, and I stood at the alter and agreed to sing the first verse of "Silent Night" in order to exemplify the acoustics. She was right, they were pretty good.
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| A view of the church |
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| The side door of the church |
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| The center of town and the Pyrénées in the background |
After the church tour, our group split into two -- half of us went to a café in another village and the other half went to the hostel's kitchen to help cook the night's dinner. Much to my dismay, I was assigned to the cooking group. We were to make garbure, a soup I thought of as the French version of stone soup. Ingredients included potatoes, carrots, onions, turnips, cabbage, leeks, beans, ham, pork ribs, and duck. We basically cut everything up, dumped it all in water, and let it cook for a while. It would end up being delicious that night. While we waited for the soup to cook, another guide arrived and took us on a hike through the valley. We descended from Estarvielle and headed to the bottom of the valley, where there sits a lake and several fields. We hiked along some bluffs over the lake, then went down right next to the water, and then completed our circle back in Estarvielle. With the Pyrénées looming in the distance, it was one of the more beautiful views I had had while in France.
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| A view of the valley across the lake. You're looking at Spain right through those clouds and just past the edge of the valley. |
After the hike around the lake and the valley, we walked to the home of our guide's friend. We were welcomed inside a cold and austere dwelling where we all sat and listened to the story told by the friend, a young woman in her late 20s or early 30s. She had studied chemistry at a university in Bordeaux and had gotten a job in a lab upon graduation. However, she was bored with that life, and decided to move to the mountains and pursue a more natural form of chemistry: making organic foods. She now makes a living working for the tourism industry and moonlights as a producer of organic jams, jellies, breads, and, most importantly, alcoholic beverages. Her speciality is called Frênésies Pyrénées. It is a slightly alcoholic (2% ABV) fermented juice made from the leaves of the ash tree (le frêne). We were given samples, and it tasted like pear flavored champagne. That's my best description. I liked it so much I bought a bottle! Apparently this juice has become so popular that she has been able to market it in some of the bigger towns nearby.
Day 2 (Sunday)
Day two of the trip was reserved for our big snowshoeing outing. After breakfast, we met our guide and were given snowshoes and trekking poles. Our guide, Michel, was one serious guy. He was like the Indiana Jones of the French Pyrénées, complete with the hat and probably a whip under his jacket. We began in the center of the village and made our way to the back, quickly ascending as we hit the side of the valley and began to go up. The hike's route went up the side of the valley, traversed across to the west, and then back down into Estarvielle. When we got to the top of the valley, the view was incredible. We could see our own village as well as all those that dotted the landscape. Michel pointed out some small farmhouses on our way up -- these were built into the side of the valley, with a ladder reaching up to the "first floor," where the farmer lived. Built in the early 1800s by goat farmers, these homes are fairly far from the village but provided the farmer and his goats with plenty of grazing room in the spring and summer.
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| The house built into the side of the valley |
Most of the students in my group found the snowshoeing to be difficult, but being from Maine I knew a thing or two. I've only been snowshoeing a handful of times, but I think just being from Maine and knowing the snow makes you a better (person) snowshoer overall. The best thing about the hike was the view. All around us were the massive Pyrénées Mountains, and below us lay the valley, with its lake in the middle and a small river snaking through toward Spain. We also had some pretty massive snowball fights along the way, most of which were instigated by the director, Madame Toux.
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| Estarvielle and its church from the top of the valley |
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| A famous L.L. Bean model we met on our hike |
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| A cross placed on a high point of the valley -- un cairn |
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| The might Pyrénées |
After descending from the top of the valley, we packed our belongings and hopped on the bus, which took us to another village. Here we visited une fromagerie -- a small cheese farm. It was one farmer and his two assistants, along with dozens of sheep, goats, and two cows. The farmer made cheese, yogurt, milk, and other dairy-based delicacies I had never seen nor tried before. I bought some yogurt and homemade blueberry jam, and we headed back to the bus. On our way we passed a house with a dog tied to a doghouse outside. There were two interesting features of this dog. One, his name was Poopy. Not even joking, it said so on his doghouse:
The other interesting part about seeing the dog was that he responded to French. Thinking I was joking, I said "ici Poopy!" instead of "here Poopy" and his ears perked up and he started to walk over to me. I'm not sure why I was so surprised he responded to French -- I mean he's a French dog. It's not like all dogs are born knowing English and then slowly but surely learned French or Italian or Spanish. I sat there feeling silly -- but even though I knew he had just grown up on French, I was still a little proud of my Poopy for being, in my mind, competently bilingual.
So that was my grand trip to the Pyrénées. If you ever get a chance, go. It is beautiful. I have many more pictures than I posted here, and I am going to create a flickr account in the next few days and posta link here, that will make it easier to view them en masse. Thanks for reading!
HIS NAME IS POOPY THAT'S HILARIOUS!
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