Tag: nature

  • First Time Hiking in France: A Short Van Trip Adventure

    First Time Hiking in France: A Short Van Trip Adventure

    We went with our MinionVan for a short but sweet trip to the border of France. It was actually a boys’ trip, but I decided to come along as well. And I’m glad I did!

    Our first lunch stop in France already had beautiful views of larches changing the color of their needles.

    But before we went to France, we had another stop in Pontida, Italy. We went for a short bike ride, where we stumbled upon a funny barbecue in front of the church.

    Anyway, the biking was a bit too cross country for me, but fun enough. The trails we did are called Uccellaia 2 and Guendalina Basso.

    Let’s return to France. It was still raining the first day. We checked out some waterfalls in the area of La Grave. We also visited my favorite French shop, E.Leclerc in Briançon.

    The second day the boys did some canyoning, I hiked up to Lac Lauvitel. Lac means lake in French. Beautiful, easy hike – 10 km, 2 hours up, less than 1.5 hours down, 750 m height difference. This was my first proper hiking in France.

    On the way to the lake:

    The views of the lake:

    The next day we were exploring a different part of Le Parc national des Écrins. I went for a nice walk to Cascade de la Pisse, along the Le Veneon river. I did this while waiting for the boys to return.

    The next day, Rick and I went to Les Deux Alpes, Venosc. Since it was a school holiday in France, we were lucky that the trails and chairlifts were open. Also the ticket was super cheap. There was snow on the top and wet further down. Still worth it!

    The views were magical!

    I was in love with this part of the trail! Photo by Rick.

    For the last day I had my morning coffee with the nicest views.

    After that I went for a stroll around La Grave. It was out of season, the town was very quite. All the locals were looking at me funny. The town is quaint though.

    This was it for our short, but magical French adventure!

  • Adventure-Filled Birthday: MTB, Diving and Canyoning

    Adventure-Filled Birthday: MTB, Diving and Canyoning

    Celebrating my birthday this year was very fun. On Sunday we went on pre-birthday MTB ride at Monte Jouf.

    We did a 2 hour ride (moving time).

    Uphill on the road.

    This was the most fun trail – Puerto escondido, which I got to do twice, thanks to shuttle bunny Rick.

    Photos by Rick

    We have also done Barbarossa, Kraken and DH Jouf II parte, with which we have started our ride. Fun trails, Barbarossa was my least favorite though.

    Photo by Rick

    The next day, my birthday, we went diving to Y40. Because my wish was to dive on my birthday, not ski as earlier years. I use my iPhone underwater with the housing Divevolk.

    Underwater photos are very blue-toned, so to have more “realistic” colors, I use Dive+ app, which restores colors. Look at some before and after photos. Photos made of me were made by Rick and I edited them.

    The utmost depth of Y40 is 40 m. Well, if you lie on the floor, it’s actually 41 m. Very cool place to practice your diving skills.

    Next day we went canyoning to Torrente Favarinis. A short 40 min walk to the entrance and more than 2 hours canyoning tour. It took us more than described, because I was downclimbing and walking slower than otherwise. I broke my record. I did a 50 m rappel by myself. It was the last out of 7 waterfalls of the canyon.

    Photo by Rick
    Photo by Rick

    When you finish you are practically by the car, which is my favorite ending a canyoning tour.

    What fun ways to celebrate my birthday!

  • My First Diving Experience in Picturesque Raja Ampat

    My First Diving Experience in Picturesque Raja Ampat

    I have wanted to try diving for a very long time now. Then Rick finally said ok, let’s do this. So we went straight to Raja Ampat, Indonesia, one of the top diving locations. Many people said we will be spoilt from now on.

    We stayed in a homestay for about 10 days. No wifi, no alcohol, no choice of food. We ate fish, rice and veggies every day for 3 times a day – my tummy loved it! Once in a while we had something different, like dadar gulung – pancakes made of coconut & pandan. We had this whole beach, like from a screensaver, just for ourselves. It was picture perfect.

    The island was very small, we would walk all around it in about 45 minutes. There was a school and the local men were fishing every day.

    On our arrival, we had some problems finding our homestay. The boat left us at the main jetty. We found out later that ours was broken. The locals don’t really speak English. After some time using gestures and attempting to pronounce the name of our homestay, we made it.

    We started our OWD at the resort of the dive center. After we passed it, we of course joined their other dives. They picked us up every day at the jetty. Every dive was special, since we were experiencing something new really. At the time, I was not taking photos yet underwater. However, our guides were so kind to take them for us. They sent us all the photos from all the dives we did.

    Between the 2 dives we always had a surface interval on one of the islands. On one of them we got a chance to see fruit bats.

    On another one we went to see the view of Piaynemo. It was beautiful to see it.

    We had some friends trailing us around the island all the way to our homestay.

    Our hosts were very kind. One day we had a privilege to get fresh coconut, straight from the palm. Our host climbed up so easily, cut it off and made it ready for us to eat. He even made a little spoon out of the peel. Amazing. Another day he came home on his narrow boat with the biggest swordfish ever. He was very proud of his catch. I forgot to put the case off of my phone, so I’m not really proud of these photos. Still, you get the picture.

    Local fishing at sunset

    We fell in love with diving! There will be more!