Two Americans and a Spaniard hiking and siesting around remote areas of the Drome valley in southern France. No, it's not the start to a bar joke, but my Easter holiday and I highly recommend it to everyone.
From Geneva, we took a short train across the border to Lyon, France then continued on another to Valence. From Valence, our Fellowship ran to catch the last bus going to our next destination: Die ("dee"). We nicknamed our bus driver, who was apparently agitated that he had missed the auditions for Mad Max, "Mr. Die" out of sheer respect (or maybe fear). Perhaps it was the way he looked at us as we threw ourselves in front of his bus or maybe it was our Spanish friend's long, wavvy hair - either way, Mr. Die allowed us to board the bus and saved our butts from having to wait hours for the next bus.
Die is a picturesque village on the edge of the Drome river. It comes with the standard accoutrements of a small French town: narrow streets, a church, Saturday market. A leisurely Friday was spent discussing politics in a sunny restaurant courtyard, skipping stones across the river, debating the identification of Albanian hookers that we had seen in Valence, and taking the first of what would be our recurring theme for the trip: a siesta. We dined that night at a pizzeria (that did not serve pizza for lunch, oddly enough) and had our tongues seduced at the hands of homemade ravioli. We woke up the next day to rain and the dread of walking 20+ kilometers wore heavier on my shoulders.
After taking another siesta to wait out the storm, we ventured from our room at the Hôtel des Alpes and took a bus to Saillans, a village due north of our next destination, Bourdeaux. Here, our archnemesis Mr. Die had planted a son: Die Junior. Die Junior took French roundabouts at three-quarter the speed that his father did, but deadly nonetheless. Saillans was considerably more "perched" than Die and upped the ante on the degree of difficulty. After hitchhiking outside of Saillans for a half-hour, tucked under a single umbrella, we knew that we had a problem.
From a sheer logistical standpoint, the trip from Saillans to Die is a nightmare. Following paved roads, it's approximately 39 kilometers (24.2 miles). As the crow flies, it's more like 15k. This, however, would require traversing a mountain pass and navigating through mountain valleys that may or may not have marked paths.
In the midst of our indecision about whether to embark on our long hike or wait for another car, our boredom overcame us. We found a small, circular rock and played hackeysack. After the first few kicks, my brain had accessed those long-forgotten recesses of my mind that housed hack routines and began to execute moves that were only ever intended to be done to a 90s soundtrack of "You're Unbelieveable" and "Are You Gonna Go My Way". We were attempting a record of six consecutive hacks when it all went horribly wrong, or right, depending on who you ask.
In a moment that seemed to be played in slow motion, the downward-accelerating hackey (rock)
We got out of the 2-door hatchback near the summit and started our descent towards Bourdeaux through the valley on a marked trailhead. The scenery was fantastic. We neared the valley floor and the temperature rose. We broke for lunch at a stream and attempted our own renditions of the Charlie Rich song "The Most Beautiful Girl in the World" (check out the badass karoake version here), although the only part that any of us knew was the three-tone, one-word chorus beginning: "Hey". Bobby Vinton's "Blue Velvet" was also incorporated into the playlist, only as a follow-on to Charlie in the absence of any other memorable music from the Time-Life music series.
A few kilometers into our trek, we identified another hitchhiking opportunity: a giant, white, rumbling recreational vehicle being driven by a French couple on holiday. For the second time, we thanked our transporters and boarded the vehicle. As our American translator made smalltalk with them, the Spaniard and I investigated the 1970s interior, complete with the bed-over-the-cab. We were deposited in Bourdeaux and began to wander around the first example of a true French perched village. We burned off hundreds of calories walking up the ruins and paths until mid-afternoon, then followed a rough, narrow, unmarked path up another mountain towards our next destination: Le Poet Celard.
Little did we know, we had only begun to sweat.
Soundtrack of the Day:
- Charlie Rich, The Most Beautiful Girl in the World
- Bobby Vinton, Blue Velvet
- EMF, You're Unbelieveable
- Lenny Kravitz, Are You Gonna Go My Way
- Tina Turner, We Don't Need Another Hero
- Willie Nelson, On the Road Again
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