The second week in France, part III

Today has been pretty much exhausting, which is partly due to the fact our bed in our mobile home really sucks and partly due to the fact that getting up early and walking for almost five hours in the blistering heat (33+ degrees Celcius in the shade) has the tendency to wear one down pretty hard.
I’m assuming both are true for today.

We went to a place referred to as ‘Prapic’, which is more commonly known in this region as a ‘mountain village’. It turned out  to be really touristic, really tiny and car-free. And, not unimportantly, pretty busy. We eventually grasped why, but this was not for a full two hours later after we entered the village. If you could name it that, it existed of exacly (and we counted them carefully) 15 houses, 17 sheds, 1 church, 1 camping (in a car-free village!) and three restaurants/bars/terraces/tea-gardens/souvenir-shops. Goes to show the tourist-mindedness of the inhabitants.

So we set out for a thing called ‘Saut de Laire’, of which we knew nothing more than it would be a 6 quarter walk with 300 meters of height-gain. Well, see for yourself.  Saut du Laire is a small cascade with a bridge, and is probably called after the plains that it resides in. The main attraction though were the ominously present marmota marmota, which we know all as Alpine Marmots. We saw at least 8 of them, while still hearing loads more. Some were pretty much domesticated by the many people that had come before us, and most likely will do after us, and some were really ‘wild’ in the sense that they would duck for cover when grabbing the faintest scent of us in the vicinity.

The sun was shining relentlessly, and that is why I’m having a little trouble colour-adjusting the pictures, so I’m only showing a small selection of the Marmot-photo’s. Perhaps the others will be added later on.
By the way: mum & dad, thanks for getting me the camera-tripod for my birthday! It has been a great tool these past few days!

And now, marmot-galore!