Friday the 13th BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

I leave Bordeaux forever one week from today.

Lots of loose ends to wrap up.

I have been a complete homebody lately, studying, planning trips and housing for next year, summer internships, jobs etc...

When I decided on Wednesday to:

Wake up at 4:00 am to catch a 6:00 am bus to Les Eyzies De-Tayac, 2.5 hours away, in an attempt to enter Les Grottes (Caves) des Font-de-Gaume and Combarelles, each of which normally requires reservations of up to a month in advance.

Obviously neither of these caves is as famous as Lascaux, the «Sistine Chapel of Prehistory», but the two are still open to the public, whereas every inch of the original Lascaux has been duplicated, the copy turned into a theme park.

Font-de-Gaume is the last open cave with polychrome cave paintings, but it's not like you'd expect. These aren't huge caverns where families would pass the time by the fire painting and telling stories of successful hunts or of creation myths. The men, women and children who engraved and painted in these caves had to crawl alone or in pairs, up to 600 meters on all fours, with just oil lamps for light, ending up in obscure crevices that no one else might ever see. Exhibition was not the point. The spiritual journey into the dark damp of the earth was just as important as the finished interpretation of bison, woolly mammoth, cave lions, horses or fertility symbols.

That's why the recreation of Lascaux, with its colors brighter than the original, is a contradiction in terms. Imagine the primordial artist, with the exact same desire for self-expression as you or me.

The flicker of the lamp would bring his creations to life; sinews of shadow would flex and twist against the contours of the grotte's walls...