Oops.

This is me being insanely lazy.

The right moment has never arrived for updating (yeah right, I have plenty of time to sleaze around, playing video games or reading or eating or just being me a doing nothing) but I decided that today was the day !!

I might cut this update in 2 parts, we'll see how much crap I can muster out of my useless memory and write down. I make everything up as I go.

So here we go !

VACATION:

It was great. Couldn't have been better. I've never had so much fun on a vacation ! So relaxing, easy peasy ! Would do it all again in a heartbeat ! Yay for Mont Blanc! A Breeeeeze!

.....

All of that was a LIE.

It was horrible.

I suffered until I was afraid to die.

Then when I continued to suffer, I was getting afraid of not being able to die.

Ok, maybe that's exaggerating it a wee bit. But it was pretty horrid.

The scenery was magnificent tho. It was worth the pain.

Ok, our initial plan was to walk 5-6 hours a day, have only the strict minimum weight (me 8kg, he 12) and enjoy it.

In truth we walked 6-8 hours per day, and carried 14 and 17kgs. Oh and don't forget the water.

Day 1:

It rained a bit. We left, bright and early, being sent off by Olivier's parents, all smiles and bubbling with excitement. I walked 10 meters in my hiking boots - that I HAD walked with on several occasions - and had to stop because they were hurting my right heel too much.

I had to cut up a foam insert to pad up me heel with the help of medical tape.

And off we went.

I kept taking pictures of the mountains because well, I had never seen mountains before arriving to Les Contamines from where we started our tour.

So it rained. And we started climbing this really steep hill. That kept going and going and going.

And finally, it became less steeper. But then it climbed again.

I was out of breath so easily that it was depressing. Olivier just kept on going, it didn't really seem to faze him.

After 6½ hours of climbing, we finally arrived at the shelter house that marked the end of walking for day 1. We started out at 1200 metres and stopped at 2500m. Do the math.

So the first night we ate at the shelter but slept in our tent. The grub was good and there was plenty of it. The night was cold and humid (we slept in the clouds) and our tent sucked ass.

It was too small, too crowded with our bags in it, too cold and too damn non-waterproof. It rained inside the tent.

And Olivier had high altitude sickness which made him have trouble breathing thus making him move around all the time, panic and keep me awake. Poor baby. I did hate him for it tho :D

After a horrible first night, we were glad to wake up and continue our journey. Anything but staying in that tent. The sun rose to light up the valley where we had to descend.

Day 2.

This is the day I cracked and wanted to call it quits.

We had been walking quite some time with the blazing sun in our backs (funny thing really, the sun was ALWAYS behind us. ALWAYS) and climbing down and up the mountain hills.

We had been climbing this one specific road that snaked up as far as the eye could see when I couldn't take it anymore and I started crying.

I felt so weak, so disappointed in myself for not being able to follow at Olivier's pace.

I told him how bad it made me feel to see him run way far in front of me, not stopping to wait, and thinking that this wasn't something we were doing together but completely separately. I guess he understood because he put himself behind me and let me decide the proper pace for me. He kept telling me to slow down, to breathe deep and calm my eager to walk faster.

And it helped.

I no longer needed to stop for a breather every 5 minutes and I was finally finding it fun and pleasant. YAY! I felt happy about doing it with him not next to him.

For the second night, we stayed at the shelter Elizabetta which was on the side of Italy !

We met a nice English couple whom we saw every day after that. It felt nice to be able to say hi and compare the suffering with people going thru the exact same thing.

The night was spent in the same room as everyone else, there was just these looooong wide wooden boards on the side of the walls where everyone slept next to their neighbors. It was funny. What wasn't funny was the big group of Asians on the other side of the room that wouldn't shut up. Or stop opening the balcony door to let the freezing air in. GAH.

And in the morning when THEY woke up, they just switched to lights on when everyone else was still sleeping. I think they were hated by many.

I'll write more when I come back from watching a rugby match.