Little did we know what awaited us the next day. We left the hotel just after 9 am, thinking we'd arrive at the condo by 11:30 or so.
That was until this happened... do click, it's worth seeing the photo over there.
Yes, that's right, 50 tons of rock fell off the mountain and onto the road leading to the resorts of Menuires and Val Thorens. Fortunately, no one was injured or killed. The problem for us was that all the resorts in this area use the same national road to access the roads to the resorts. We don't split off until a few kilometers before each one.
So a 2 1/2 hour drive turned into a 12 1/2 hour drive... or a 12 1/2 hour stop, mainly... the road looked like this for most of the way. Car engines were turned off, the stops were so long.
So a 2 1/2 hour drive turned into a 12 1/2 hour drive... or a 12 1/2 hour stop, mainly... the road looked like this for most of the way. Car engines were turned off, the stops were so long.
On the bright side, I finally got a great, clear photo of this castle far, far up the mountain. Easier to have a stable zoom when your car isn't also moving.
People even got out of their cars, and walked a couple of kilometers to the nearest gas station to take a break.
We saw this guy advertising pine furniture. I'm not sure we'd ever seen him before, in all of our trips, but we had plenty of time to see everything this time!
It looked like this far into the night... after leaving at 9 am, we finally arrived at the top around 9:30 pm. We heard on the radio that we had around 40 km worth of traffic backup. Our average speed according to the car's computer was around 4 km/h. Yeouch.
If ever there was an argument for taking the train, this might be it... of course, if the boulder fell on the tracks, there'd be trouble, too.
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