Sunday 30th December 2018

The truck had died totally the night before. Thankfully we had enough ingredients for the dinner Nathan and I cooked, however we had no food for New Years Eve eve. Today. So, Team Extreme got the bus to the slopes and Team Green stayed behind. Why? We had to phone breakdown to come and look at the truck. If it wasn’t able to be fixed, we were going to have to have big lunches on the slopes and then bread and butter for dinner. Alex made eggs for breakfast whilst Nathan called breakdown. Luckily they spoke English. We sat and waited, tried to start it a few times. Failed. It only took about an hour and a half or so for a guy in a little van to turn up with something called ‘easy start,’ to assist us. Google translate and hand gestures came in handy! Between the two of them and the glow plugs being the recipient of the easy start spray, the truck got going.The hilarious mobile meme game also continued today. Oh boy did we find it funny. We had tried the actual boxed meme game, however we weren’t that impressed by it. Playing it in real time on our phones was so much more fun.Caption these…Anyway, thankfully the truck was fixed. For now anyway. We thought it a good idea to find some of the easy start spray incase we (inevitably) encountered more starting problems. That meant a trip to the Carrefour where we managed to grab some very easily and fill up with fuel. Next on the agenda was to go to the board rental shop we got our boots and skis from so we could get Nathan a better board.Wow. The traffic! What should have been a 30 minute journey maximum was saying it would take well over an hour. It was approaching lunchtime and we hadn’t been on the slopes today, so, Nathan flung the truck around and we headed to Croix Fry. It was a Sunday and my god was it heaving. There was nowhere to park at all. Clearly this is what the locals do on a Sunday in Manigod. Quick trip to the slopes for a day of sun and snow. I think we all wish we could live closer to actual mountains with real snow. So, it was on to Merdessier, the first location we went to on day one as there was a rental place there and plenty of places to park.I was so glad that it was a successful trip to the snowboard rental shop. Thankfully they spoke English, had a large variety of snowboards and were also cheap! Nathan was happy with his board in the end and he also purchased some wrist guards (which came in handy unfortunately) and then it was time to try it out.The boys took themselves up the blue slope which I had a strop on day one and I was so pleased that Nathan was now enjoying himself on his new board. It was better than the afternoon in day one when they did the same run except Ollie came down and Nathan was nowhere to be seen.

“He’s just up the top…” Ollie told us

Roughly ten minutes later, “How far at the top was he?”

“Dunno, I just wanted to see how quick I could get down the run.” By this point it had been a while and Nathan should have been down with us by now. He wasn’t that slow.

“Up you go Ollie to see if you can find him…”

The queue was huge for the lift so it took him a while to even get onto it to go up. It wasn’t long before he was coming back down. On his own again. I was pretty calm as I was sure he’d be ok somewhere. Then I checked the find a friend app on my phone and it didn’t tell me where he was. Alex was getting worried when all of a sudden he strolled over to us from the right. Apparently he just kept falling over, hit his head so did what I did on day one and strolled down the mountain.

It was going to be an even better second half of the trip now he had sorted the board situation. Satisfied, we got in touch with Team Extreme who had unbeknown to us, skied/boarded from Croix Fry over to Merdessier and we could now meet up for lunch! Due to the delicious food we had on day one, we decided to eat in the same place. Worst. Decision. Ever. The waitress didn’t really speak any English so we resorted to pointing on the menu for food which was fine and then I ordered drinks as best I could in French. Ruby by now had downloaded the sentence in French that says she has a severe nut allergy so made sure this was shown at each meal to prevent any reactions. We must have been sat there a good couple of hours. It took forever for the drinks to come, but they did give us a free beer. They took forever to come because the waitress lost the bit of paper with the order on! How that is possible I don’t know!! Then the food also took forever to come and they had run out of pizza! How can a bloody Italian named restaurant run out of pizza!?? Granted it was busy and there were two people serving but still. Ridiculous. Eventually we got fed and watered and the boys went back off on the slopes with the idea they’d go to the shop after to get food and drink. The girls stayed behind, Danie and I had another beer and wine, we settled the bill, got an apology from the manager and got the bus back to the chalet.We got the bus all the way back to our chalet this time, as we had finally figured out how to read the bus timetable properly. I mean once the people in the tourist information showed us that if the time is written under the stop then it stops there. If it’s not then it doesn’t, hence why the first day we got stranded at Croix Fry because the bus at that particular time didn’t stop at Le Chenevray. It only took us three days to figure it out…No sooner had we got back to the chalet, ski gear was stripped off (not that Alex or I had needed ours today), comfties put on, drinks in hand it was girl time. We had a good old chin wag over a few drinks whilst admiring Alex’s princess hair, as the boys ran the errand of food shopping. Thankfully the truck started ok at Merdessier and at the shop. Phew! We weren’t going to have to walk the 710 miles home! What a relief haha! The sun was setting and the lights turned on outside the chalet. It was so pretty.The boys got back from the shop with a much better trip than the girls had, fully equipped with food and a tonne of meat for our New Year BBQ the following day! For now though….

It was Wong’s turn to feed us this evening. A delicious chicken thai curry. Yum 😋. Whilst he was slaving over the hot stove, we were watching Black Panther. Great film!Dinner was served. This evenings entertainment with our full stomachs, was none other than the game, Cards Against Humanity.We were having such a good time away. Beautiful location. Beautiful chalet. Beautiful friends…loving every minute of life…

Until next time…