Sunday morning we woke up in Sarlat. The parents only bearing slight headaches because we discovered:
1) Red wine from Bergerac
2) a bar called Café Lébérou
We don’t have any pictures from the bar except for the sign outside the next morning. Partly because it wasn’t clear whether the local patrons would take too kindly to flashes going off while they nursed the whisky, belgian ale, or the ‘house drink’, a wickedly strong Planteurs Punch. The bar combined the mediaevel rustic stone charm of Sarlat, with a playlist comprised of Dire Straits, Led Zepplin, and even a little Jerry Lee Lewis. As we sat at the bar, the bartender would occasionally give the punch a stir and add something from a random bottle. If you have an evening in Sarlat, you must drop by Lébérou for a nightcap. Get the Punch, but if you arrive late, just drink half.
Everyone was ready to go by 10am, not a bad start. The girls had also been up late. Our hotel room had a balcony that overlooked the main walking street. One of the girls put the long lens on her Canon SLR and did some lurking of the passersby and the street artists.
We made our way to Vitrac-Port to get two canoes for a 16km trip down the Dordogne River to Beynac. Leaving at 11:30am, we arranged to be picked up on a 4pm bus in Beynac back to our car in Vitrac.
We began our journey, taking care not to capsize the canoes right at the start. The river moves along at a nice pace. Fast enough that you could drift and catch interesting scenery without getting bored. But, there is a funny phenomenon about boats. Any boats. If you have one boat alone, you can enjoy a nice cruise. But, if you have two boats. It automatically becomes a race.
Every bridge became a finish line. Every English family became an enemy dreadnought to be vanquished through speed and American perseverance. Only the French seemed to understand the concept of a leisurely cruise. Especially one couple—with a portly older gentleman laying in the back of their boat, arms stretched behind his bald head as his topless wife paddled their way downstream.
The captain of the second American boat gives her crew some hearty encouragement.
This was a very civilized canoe trip, not at all like the Cahulawassee River. There were snack bars along the way. Of course, this being France, there were few, if any, public toilets. But maybe that’s my cultural filter. Viewed from a different perspective there are really limitless places to go to the bathroom along the way.
Nice snack bars, and plenty of rest stops along the way.
We hit a few rapids along the way. And ran aground a couple of times. Saw a few big fish. Trip time in the water was about 3 hours, and with our stops, the total time was about 4 hours. At the final boat landing was a snack trailer, where we got bags of chips and I got a draft beer. Very civilized indeed.
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