{"id":607,"date":"2009-08-06T15:35:52","date_gmt":"2009-08-06T21:35:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/macblaze.ca\/?p=607"},"modified":"2009-08-17T19:36:34","modified_gmt":"2009-08-18T01:36:34","slug":"day-fourteen-river-pirates-for-a-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/macblaze.ca\/?p=607","title":{"rendered":"Day Fourteen: River Pirates for a Day"},"content":{"rendered":"

It was a hot and muggy evening but we all drifted off to sleep. Morning found me up and about first so I grabbed a shirt and went into town for fresh baguette and some OJ. When I got back all was still quiet so I boiled some water and read for a bit. Eventually Carmen stirred insisting she’d been awake for hours on account of the noisy bonjour bird (that apparently only speaks to her, but is louder than me clanking around the galley?). <\/p>\n

I was anxious to get the first locks over with so I roused Zak and settled in for bageuette and coffee. Soon he was up so I fired up the engine, cast off and headed for the locks just up canal from Buzet. There was a mechanical problem with the lock so we waited for about 6 minutes to get it sorted then followed a boat in. The boat in front is manned by a couple and the woman seems rather nervous. That leaves the gentleman trying to manage the boat and the ropes. He hasn’t seemed to master boat handling enough to realize he should stay at the helm rather than jumping off and trying to handle it with ropes. In the 2nd lock I gave him a hand with the stern line while he got the bow sorted out. <\/p>\n

After the two consecutive locks we had descended into the Baise. The next two days are river travel but the Baise is very slow. The banks are lush and much more natural than the canal and generally more shady. We passed under the canal which is a neat experience and slowly made our way upstream. The river is a bit busier as this seems to be more locaboat territory; we’ve passed four boats already, more than we’ve done in entire days. There go 2 more…<\/p>\n

Leslie’s been at the helm mostly this morning and I’m enjoying the shade. Zak is spending his time sleeping and C is mostly draping herself elegantly over various bits and pieces of furniture. <\/p>\n

Vianne was gorgeous with it’s weir and old mill. We’ll stop on our way downstream. Also in the river are small day boats that you can rent in Buzet. They look a lot like the jungle ride boats at an amusement park. The locks are controlled by key card. So if the lock isn’t ready we let Zak off and wait for him to start the cycle. Since we were going upstream and the locks were deep, the crew got their practice throwing ropes up to Zak. <\/p>\n

We passed some old mansions, lots of mills and locks and some peaceful, peaceful scenery. We pulled into Nerac around 2:30. The last lock leads to an ancient bridge with the port right on the other side.<\/p>\n

About 10 seconds after docking we head for beer. Leffe blonde d’Abbeye is our current beer after this stop. Mmmmm, Carmen and Leslie tried for witty Bruce bashing but failed miserablely. After a 25 cl we moved on to a 50 cl. Cold. Beer. Good.<\/p>\n

After Carmen failed to drink Bruce under the table we paid our port fees and walked up to the info centre and picked up some info. We will stay the night and likely the day tomorrow so we picked up some more wine, coke, tomatoes, onions etc. And headed back to the boat to absorb the beer and wait for the restaurants to open. So Carmen made salad. <\/p>\n

A quick snack of bread and tomato salad and we retired for some quiet time. Leslie had a nap, Zak read inside, I read in the bow and Carmen read in her pajamas.<\/p>\n

7 rolled around and we headed up the hill for pizza. About 5 minutes in we heard a tremendous crash of glass and dinnerware. A few minutes later the hostess brought out four drinks: une cadeaux! Seems dinner was going to take a few minutes longer. About 6 or 7 minutes later a car pulled up and the hostess and driver hauled in stacks of new plates from the trunk to a laugh from the patrons. The pizza was delicious with a pichet of ros\u00e9. Stuffed, we left content for a stroll around town before settling back at the boat. <\/p>\n

A bottle of medoc and a quick cribbage slaughter which saw Zak and Les being handily skunked put the polish on the evening. <\/p>\n

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It was a hot and muggy evening but we all drifted off to sleep. Morning found me up and about first so I grabbed a shirt and went into town for fresh baguette and some OJ. When I got back all was still quiet so I boiled some water and read for a bit. Eventually […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/macblaze.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/607"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/macblaze.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/macblaze.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/macblaze.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/macblaze.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=607"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/macblaze.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/607\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/macblaze.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=607"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/macblaze.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=607"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/macblaze.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=607"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}