from the Perigord Noir, in southwest France: the imprint of time

The tourist in me wakes up this morning and says: it’s not all about food. I want to step inside places and spaces that shake my soul. I want to see sights.

I want to see the caves.

This is a challenge. There are in this world only three known polychromatic prehistoric caves (the art dates back some 15,000 years).

One is near here, in Lascaux. But forty years ago, it threw the last tourist out. Unless I can come up with a fake ID attesting to the fact that I am a bona fide archeologist, I cannot go to the real Lascaux. I can only visit Lascaux II, a nearby reproduction. It wont do. I am in agreement with Oscar’s blogpost (put forth in a different context): if it’s not real, then the reaction to it is equally dishonest.

The second such cave is in Spain. I am not in Spain. Besides, that one, too, closed its doors to the mighty rush of tourism.

And then there is Font-de-Gaume, the only cave in the world with polychromatic prehistoric paintings accessible, in a limited way, to the likes of me.

180 people a day. In groups of twelve. That is all. In the summertime, you need a reservation months in advance. It’s sort of like getting tickets for John Stewart’s the Daily Show, only worse. It’s harder to get to Font-de-Gaume than it is to NYC.

Ahhhhh, the beauty of visiting the Perigord in the off off season.

I point my mini car toward Les Eyzies de Tayac, the small small town (just 15 kilometers south of where I am!) with a huge reputation: the first known bones of homo sapiens sapiens (not a repeat typo!) were found here. And, it is home to the cave with the stalactites and a bunch of other -tites, rarely seen elsewhere. Finally, it is the site of the Font-de-Gaume cave art.

Les Eyies on a warm spring day. Students at the local school take their break outdoors.



Children play, adults exhale.




It’s the kind of day where you don’t give up easily.

I go to the tourist office.
Can I get a ticket for the caves?
A shrug. You need to go to the site. Buy in advance. You wont get in now.

I pace the lovely and uncrowded at this time of the year blocks of the town. I go into a wine store and purchase the first great bottle of wine that I tell myself will grace the wine storage cooler in my new condo (a leap on my part; I have received numerous emails indicating that the condo is anything but a done deal; though if all fails, I will take my splendid bottle of wine, pop the cork and drink it prematurely, in big gulps, in a corner of a closet).

Undecided, I pace some more. I buy a huge amount of cheese because a street vendor convinces me that it will keep forever, without refrigeration. I believe her. I believe the world.




More pacing of sorts. I go to the Grotte du Grand Roc – a magnificent place where an intelligent guide tells a half dozen of us (the beauty of off season travel cannot be overestimated) all about the way these are formed (and yes, Ann, I thought of your post at numerous junctures throughout the visit):






growing every which way


It is early afternoon. I tell myself: bite the bullet. Go and beg.

I go and beg. People, I say in my best French, I want to see the caves. I want to see the art that graces their walls: the bison, the reindeer engaged in acts of love and sexual advancement, I want to see it all!
How many are you?
I am but one. Solo. Traveling alone, eating alone. I am by myself.
Okay. We will let you go with the 15:00 hour group as a thirteenth (only twelve are permitted at a time).

I hope my eyes convey my thanks.

My ticket says : get there early! I do, but my group is already waiting. Two Spaniards, one American living in France, the rest -- French.

There is a sign at the entrance: this visit is tough on claustrophobics.
Fifteen years ago I developed a case of severe claustrophobia, a post-traumatic reaction to unfortunate circumstances.

I have been trying hard to overcome it. Fifteen years ago, I could not sit in an office without a window. I could not drive through the Holland Tunnel under the Hudson River.

But, two weeks ago, I took the bus that I knew would travel (for ten minutes!) underneath the Italian-Swiss Alps. And, blissfully, I fell asleep somewhere in the middle. I had wondered if that week-end in the Alps had cured me of a number of fears and foibles.

Still, a cave? For an hour? With no emergency exits (because cave people felt no need to put in emergency exits)?

It’s now or bust. I want so much to see this art!

Jean-Marie is our guide.





And let me say it straight, at the outset: the next hour, spent in that cave, is undeniably one of the best tourist-sight-viewing hours of my life.

If I were asked to recommend one important tourist attraction in this world, I’d probably say – go for the Eiffel Tower, the Grand Canyon, Venice.

But, after you have checked off all that our modern humankind, with a strong dose of good old nature, have had to offer, go (preferably with Jean-Marie as guide) to the Font-de-Gaume. Experiencing those pieces of art on the walls of the cave may change your life.

A French family is with us: a grandmother, grandfather, the middle generation, the teen son who guides grandma through dark, narrow passageways. She had been to many prehistoric caves in her days and still, you should see her face light up now! She is the most enthusiastic from our bunch. Fine, there's also me...

After a long corridor, we are before a masterpiece. The bisons – there are 82 of them in the cave and they are never aggressively positioned agaisnt each other. Our guide traces their contours, not always discernible in detail, with a beam from a flashlight.

Further down, he flashes a light onto the reindeer.


(cameras are not permitted: all of these are my photos of book photos)


The painters used color (red, black), but they also used the relief of the cave walls to give depth to the limbs and musculature of the animals.





Such a profoundly moving positioning of the beasts! A reindeer kneels down in a submissive pose. Another licks his (her?) head in what is a gesture of sublime caring.



look carefull at my arrow: do you see the snout? the eye of the smaller reindeer? You would have noticed the tongue as well, had you been in the cave

Which is the female? – I ask.
Jean-Marie is used to my questions. They are all unanswerable and not because I articulate them in French. Do you suppose the halls were temples? Did men or women paint? Was it one artist or many?

One of the women in our group muses – it’s nice to see a submissive pose on the part of the reindeer that is kneeling, if that is the male. Or of the soothing gesture of licking, if that is the male. So gentle!
Do you mean we are not gentle? – Jean-Marie smiles.

A horse is straddling another. Natural, organic movement, Jean-Marie comments.
You know, we can do all this now, with computers, we can simulate it and create paintings not unlike these. But 15,000 years ago, our ancestors were painting by the light of torches, creating depth and movement and perspective that we can now only imitate. The intelligence and artistry behind it is incredible!

He gazes at the figures, as if seeing them for the first time. With each successive image, our group gasps audibly. Ahhh! We throw out spontaneous reactions, we comment on each others’ observations.

We are enthralled.

We are also over our time limit. Jean-Marie guides us out. Thank you so much for your attitude, he tells us. It is everything.

Yes, thank you, thank you.

I go down to the town center. It is not yet 6. I have not eaten lunch, but I need a break from big time eating. I wander into a café-brasserie and I ask if they will feed me. Too early! -- madame tells me. But for you…

She brings an omelet with cepe mushrooms, a salad and a small bottle of rose. And a double noisette. I stay for a long time.

from small villages tucked into the hills and forests of the Perigord Noir in France

Plazac, my home base, has:
- a café-bar
- a restaurant
- a bakery
- a church
- an organic grocer (“bio coop”)

and that’s it.

I take that back.
‘alo?
Alo, est-ce-que je peux faire une reservation pour diner ce soir?
Non, sorry madame. I stopped serving food this winter.

So, Plazac only has:
- a café-bar
- a bakery
- a church
- and organic grocer (“bio coop”)

But, according to the village website, you can also hire:
- a carpenter (my landlord)
- an architect
- a painter

All other goods and services are to be acquired elsewhere, many kilometers down winding, forested roads.

In the very first hours in the village, I make the rounds.
At the bakery, I note that they also sell wine. If all other food procurement fails, I shall have wine and bread in the house (which, itself, is a kilometer or so outside the village).



I study the bottles.

Madame would like wine?
I’m looking for a white (there are two dozen reds, one white; she lifts out the white for me).
You will want cassis for it.

So it’s true: kir (white wine mixed with currant liqueur) is a French way of dealing with indifferent white wine.

She places a large bottle of cassis on the counter. I am about to object, but in the meanwhile, her great hunk of a dog has entered the store. For me, he has a low growl. Instinctively my hand goes out so he can have his sniff and go bother someone else.

Attendez! Do not do that! He bites hands.
I pull back, pay for the bread, the wine and cassis and retreat.

I sit down at the counter of the café-bar.



Une noisette, please. (Funny how in France, I am happy with an espresso with just a splash of milk.)

I drink it, pay the Euro and leave. Linger at a café table all you want. But at a bar counter – drink and run. Especially if you are alone.

I pass the church...





...on my way to the bio-cop, where the shelves are filled with stuff you’ll likely find at a low key co-op back home: lots of potions and alternative this and that’s and a few hardy vegetables that made it through the winter, but just barely. I buy an organic rosé to take back to the States and a few cookies that promise to be so good for me that I wont be tempted to eat them much.


Sunday morning is market day at the village of Rouffignac. It is a wet and blustery morning – the last of the cooler days here, they say. I don’t really want to cook in my imperfect kitchen of my little house on the Plazac hill. I watch people with baskets, ready for the new asparagus and old potatoes. I buy a goat cheese and head for the bakery.




Do you suppose a baguette, a boule and a chocolate croissant are enough bread product for a day?





The clock passes the noon hour.

If you want to dine among the French on a Sunday, head for a good farm restaurant in the country shortly after noon. Somehow, through impossible to reproduce now Net searches, I found Le Croquant in Fanlac, a mere 8 kilometers down a narrow, narrow strip of a road.




I drive up at 1 pm after phoning in a reservation a few days back. It’s packed. As ever, I am greeted with smiles and fusses. No country in the world looks after single women travelers as well as France does. I sit at a table that looks out at both ends of the L shaped room.





I pick the set menu, the middle one, with only seven courses: a huge tureen of soup, a home made pate (and sausage thrown in), an omelet with maybe half a dozen eggs and chanterelle mushrooms, a duck confit (and a duck filet in rabbit sauce thrown in), vegetables, salad, fresh cheese with home jams and a tart with plums. Add to it a pitcher of wine and an espresso. All that for 22 Euros, taxes and service included. All excellent. Fresh. And so very honest.

It takes me three and a half hours to eat this:


























During the meal I occasionally read a passage or two in my book about Paleolithic caves. Southwest France has two thirds of all the decorated prehistoric caves known to the world. I am heady from these descriptions, read just a handful of kilometers from the sites, while sitting in this room full of French men and women soaking up all traces of sauce with country bread. Wind gusts throw down occasional rain. Inside, it is warm, full of the fragrance of comfort food.

By the time the final dishes come, I begin to wonder if this is how the goose feels --- stuffed to capacity, giddy from the experience, the sauces, the enormity of it all. And for the millionth time I contemplate how the French can eat all this and stay fit. Why aren't they addicted to sedentary days spent in front of computer screens? No wonder their WiFi is imperfect. Most likely they hardly notice. Too busy spending Sundays in village restaurants soaking up sauces and the words of their loved ones.

Still, unlike the fattened goose who has no say in the matter, I am determined to live beyond this day and so I begin to leave a portion of the food on the plate. The owner takes it in stride. Woman eats alone. Woman hasn't the appetite of the French. Woman isn't French. Understood.

This meal stands out for me as the one about which a movie could be made.

Around the tables, life unfolds.

An older woman, significantly older than me, is putting on lipstick. No mirror. Bright red. I, as usual, forgot to put on any. But she is careful that way. And now she is looking into the distant space, thinking what? That her children and grandchildren are grown and away from the village?

Her husband has his arm on her chair, sometimes around her shoulders. He studies a piece of paper, she is still gazing. But then she smiles at him as his arm moves around her again. Love. You want to know what love is? Here, in Fanlac, at Le Croquant, I am witnessing love.





She unfolds a rain hat. Remember those? Clear and plastic, fanning out over your head, tying under the chin? She gets up and puts on her coat. Oh! She is almost blind! She walks the wrong way. He smiles, leans on his two canes and guides her to the door.








I tear up. A chick flick could not bring out the wealth of feeling that little scene demonstrates. Or maybe it’s the duck medallions in rabbit stew that are rubbing my sentimental corners. Potent foods.

And there are other scenes, equally telling. Just on the other side of my enormous bouquet, two older couples and a woman maybe in her thirties are eating together. The “younger” one has been through these meals countless times, you can tell, but today she is withdrawn. For her, there is no joy in being here. Surreptitiously, under the table, she flicks on her cell. Nothing. She puts it away. She listens to her companions (parents?) but says absolutely nothing. Her life is elsewhere. Or, she wishes it were so.




One of the older women begins to sing. Boisterously, emphasizing the last word of each phrase. She must be doing it for the younger one, she is looking at her. “Rien de rien, je ne regrette rien.” The young woman ignores her.

Such a French song. One doesn’t associate Edith Piaf (who sings this beautifully) with the Perigord, but Josephine Baker, on the other hand, was all over this place. Ignored in the States, beloved here. A fighter. Singing while dressed in banana peels. Died broke, but put a lot of oomph into her life. Bet she had no regrets.

The one thing I do not regret is being right here, in this place, at this time.

The meal ends slowly. People linger. A girl moves to her mother’s lap, conversations are quieter.




Four-thirty? Really? My first full day in the Perigord and it is whiled away at a little table with a large bouquet of spring flowers on it.

from oysters to geese, in SW France

It’s morning in Pons. I’m to head for the Perigord Noir, the region of fat geese and duck confit.

But at the petit Pons Saturday market, after purchasing a kilo of endive because I love it so, I note these two, who have came in with the oysters…




I turn the car away from Perigord Noir and head toward the Atlantic Ocean.

Eventually I get to what seems like the oyster hub of central France. I drive over the long bridge to Ile d’Oleron, just off the western coast. A stretch of flat land slapped on all sides by ocean waters. Muddy waters. The kind that oysters love to call home. (Oysters like slime it seems.)


beach and mud. what fun.



shell life



low tide?

I drive up and down the island and watch people do their island Saturday stuff. They do what we do on this day: chores.

Maybe this is why they are so frazzled on the road. If ever you are inching slowly on a French rural road, wondering if you should be on the D706 in the direction of Montignac, or on the N21 in the direction of Bergerac, concluding that you are completely off in your directions and only a u-turn will save you from yourself, you’ll get the equivalent of a finger for sure. French people on the road have no patience for the likes of me. Nor I for them. We finger each other (figuratively!) quite a lot. They become road mean and they bring out the tough and don't you push me around side of me that I thought I had left back in the old country.

Off the road, all is forgotten and we are fast friends, shaking hands and kissing each other furiously to demonstrate our sincerity.

But I digress. The oysters: yes, it is a big thing here. I wander in and around now empty oyster huts. Did people seek shelter here in bad weather?




I stay too long on the island chasing down mud banks and staring at those who fish in them for the stuff that eventually you and I will find so sophisticatedly decadent.



by hand



by boat (of sorts)



Refocus: head inland. Perigord Noir, dark and brooding, is waiting.

At first, the transition from the coastal land to the Perigord is nice, mellow. Hi there, cognac-country, wine-country, gentle slopes with vines that are just now waking up.





But then quite suddenly, it all changes. Fields are gone. Forests – trees still not entirely green – replace the vines and mustard yellow flowers. I think I like it, I think I like it… Hmmm…

It's like someone switched stations on me and I am now watching a different movie.



entering Perigord Noir

At every bend in the road, there is a sign directing you to a farm where you can visit and buy foie gras. In their spare time, all the people of Perigord Noir must be making foie gras. Should I go visit? Should I? After all, I watched a harvest of oysters and I photograph fishermen frequently. Aren’t fat geese, well treated fat geese in the same league? We take pictures of cows even though the vast majority of cows on our side of the ocean are so miserably treated it hurts.

Let me mull this one over.

In the meantime, I am getting acquainted with my village, Plazac. I’ll say this much about it now: it is remote!

More on my first encounters with the village folk tomorrow. Tres fatigue tonight.

[Post script: if there is one thing that will someday put an end to my travel blogging it is my relationship to the Internet in France. It has virtually always malfunctioned. It completely warped my email program in Pons. And here, in the Perigord, it killed my USB port, so that I can no longer download photos in any straightforward fashion from my camera. Thank you, Ed, for helping me find, by phone, through tedious, convoluted steps, a temporary fix until I get back to the States. France, you have GOT to do better with the WiFi! PLEASE!]

post from Pons

All you have to do is guess which country has Pons in it. No Wiki checking! I am helpful, I give photo hints:

This morning, I eat an early stand-up breakfast here:


early illy

Tired and, I admit it, a little cold, I nonetheless continue on my journey. I hesitate only half a second before deciding I should pick one of these up for the ride:



By mid-afternoon, after a bus, a plane and a train, I am almost there. I do the last short lap by car. This one. It's my partner for the week:



It would have been less than an hour on the road had I not stopped to admire these:


spring vines

Now you’re thinking – wine. It’s all about wine. She’s doing her vineyard visit thing. Next thing you know, she’ll be pushing one wine or another and telling everyone what to drink.

No.

In truth, I am so very close to the place where Ann’s favorite post-dinner beverage is made. It's all about the c word here. This is serious stuff. Take a look at the selection from local producers, displayed at my evening meal in Pons (some 20 kilometers from the town of Cognac):



I’m not here for long – just one night. I am waiting for my house rental to become available on Staurday. That will be in the deep Perigord Noir (the black Perigord). Okay, in case you haven't quite located it -- it's in the southwest of France.

Most people regard the Perigord region as the place which gave us overfed geese with huge livers. I prefer to associate it with cepes (the mushrooms) and berries. But all that should be talked of tomorrow. Today I am at the edge of it, closer to the Atlantic coast.

Pons has a very nice little restaurant (indeed, I chose it because I am a huge fan of small, regional restaurants with rooms). Nothing fancy, nothing elaborate. Just a place to take your dog or spouse to when you want to step back from your stove for a bit. Inside and out, it looks like a million others.


Hotel de Bordeaux: no, it's not in Bordeaux, but close

But the kitchen is not a run of the mill place. In my opinion, it is outstanding, even for this side of the ocean.

Around me, I do not hear much English. True, there is a British couple right at my side. Easy to spot. She orders a plain salad. Perhaps she is on a diet. She is thin, but you know how odd people can be about maintaining a good weight. (If I were her, I would maintain the good weight while in England and chomp away here, south of the Channel, but that’s just me.)

A groan is heard. A loud one. It’s from the dog by the French speaking table on my other side. Meanwhile, its owner is surveying the cheese board. She asks for recommendation from the young waiter. And I mean young. How sweet to have confidence in what he has to say about cheese.






Oh, but this country is insane about food. The restaurant is packed (with two Brit-occupied tables, a dozen French settings, and of course me). We are in the middle of nowhere and people are lining up, as they are in the town next to this and the next one and the next, just to have themselves a fine meal at the end of the day.

And it is a very, very fine meal. Carpaccio of scallops with shrimp and carrot mousse, fish fillets over braised endive with cocoa and orange sauce, crepes stuffed with a Grand Marnier soufflé – those are just my main dishes. Well worth the long, long trip over to small, insignificant Pons.









I am falling over from tiredness. I didn’t even try a cognac. I know, do as the locals do. But for me, the day ends with an Illy noisette and a dish of cookies. Too tired to contemplate anything else. I post an unedited post from Pons and collapse. Tomorrow – the Perigord.

promises

... of internet connections, even in Pons -- my first stop on a not too complicated itinerary (but it is a long journey, so be patient, I wont get there 'til tomorrow).

...of good weather later in the week.

... of good food, of calm, quiet.

Spring break is never a total vacation. But I can put myself elsewhere and it will feel like a vacation. That's the joy of being away from home.

Whether some of the other promises -- of good weather and Internet access -- hold, now that remains to be seen.

Check back tomorrow and see if you spot a posting from Pons.

Spring break. Finally. How nice.