I met Mark and Sylvia and their friend Marcel in the morning and we drove for about 45 minutes out of the city to a little spot in the hills to go walking. We walked up a gorge filled with hordes of tourists before lunch. Following this we headed away from the crowds and into the forest in search of a cave. Along the way we found a very tame Chamoix. Was he/she unwell? We don’t know but he didn’t seem to be particularly frightened of us.
Above: Cris and his pet Chamoix. This fellow was very tame and allowed us to get quite close to him.
We located our elusive cave and Marcel, Mark, and I ventured into it with lights of dubious quality. My batteries were really rather flat and we replaced them with Marcel’s camera batteries after some time. At first I scoffed at the idea that you could get disoriented inside a cave but we had differing opinions as to which way was out after a while. Luckily we had just climbed a large ladder so once we located this again we knew which way to go. The entrance was dazzling as we left the cave and the daylight appeared so rich compared to the light from our LED torches. Apparently the cave extends for kilometres into the mountain.
Above left: Mark, Marcel, and Cris exposed at length in the cave. Above right: The light looked really amazing once we neared the entrance compared with the light from our LED torches.
We had planned to have tea with Elizabeth but unfortunately we got back too late. I moved to Marcel’s for the night and Mark and Sylvia cooked a quick meal before we browsed the photos from the day and went to bed.
Above left: Doesn’t running water look nice when you photograph it using a long exposure? Above right: Mark and Marcel must have been saying something interesting about this sign.
Marcel and I see eye-to-eye on the number of photos that should be taken during any trip, i.e. lots. He took almost as many photos as I did during the day which, as you may know, is quite an achievement. He’s doing a PhD at Graz university and is doing a mixture of computer vision and computer graphics (I think). He’s a nice, friendly guy.
Below: Marcel is crucified whilst jumping. What is Mark doing?
