Today is a learning day that begins with how to take a shower in this villa. Instructions for the shower come with villa’s guide, and understanding how to use the extra hand-held shower tube still requires a learning curve.
We learn the grocery supermarkets are not opened on Sunday, not even the Carrefours which would be similar to a Walmart superstore. In the village of Armissan, the butcher, baker, and a sundry store are open for only a few hours. We buy a rotisserie-roasted chicken (le poulet), which will be more than enough for two meals. The croissants from the baker are as delicious as you might expect, especially the chocolate chip ones for breakfast. At the sundry store we buy tomatoes and apples. We look for the milk in the refrigerated case and can’t find it. The owner shows its location is in a 6-pack under the shelf on the floor. The milk is sterilized. We refrigerated it before we drank it.
The other thing we learn to buy is diesel fuel for our transport, the Volvo V60. The instruction book for our car is in Spanish since we rented it in Barcelona, and in Espana diesel looks like diesel with accent marks. My French phrase books use the word l’essence which translates as gasoline. In France, the diesel fuel we need is on those three nozzle pumps similar to the ones in USA, and the word is gazole. Gazole costs 1.47 Euros per liter, which is about $8.32/gallon, and premium gasoline costs even more.
We have a lovely countryside drive to the Museum of Prehistory in Tautavel where we can see the skull of a 450,000-year-old human, known as Tautavel Man.
The museum has audio guides which translate the information into English. We enjoy the displays of fossils and the dioramas that spark our imagination.
Tautavel man had some crude tools made from stone; but he did not yet have fire. In this area, there had been elephants, rhinoceros, and giant bears for this was before an Ice Age. During the Ice Age, some of the elephants evolved into woolly mammoths and there were reindeer. A camera was linked to the excavation sites to show the scientists at work in a cave where different layers of sediment show many different periods of human habitation.
After the museum we drive out of town to the parking area of the Caune De L'Arago and Gorges des Gouleyrous which is beside a graveled road in a vineyard field. We enjoy a walk along the beach area of the river.
We did not find trailheads for hikes to higher elevations. A pictograph looked as if rock climbing were allowed. Again my phrasebooks failed me for there was no translation for “grimpe.”
We enjoy today's scenery. My camera can’t do justice to the depth of the walls of the gorge for so much of it is in shadow even this early in the afternoon.
We eat supper at the villa. We return to the beach at Narbonne-Plage for pictures of the moonrise over the Mediterranean Sea. I try to capture the reflection of the moon in the waves and water on the beach.
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