Lost Adventures

When you’re abroad, you will encounter many different situations. The most common will be getting lost. But honestly, getting lost is the best. You find the coolest things that are not seen on the path most commonly taken. Or worst comes to worst you’ll have to use some of your newly-learned language skills to redirect yourself and you’ll have a funny story to tell like me.

Eighteen friends and I decided to rent a cabin in the French Alps for the weekend. This was probably one of my favorite trips. We all left at different times; my girlfriend and I were the first to leave. We got on the train at 9 o'clock and three hours later, we arrived at our destination, L’Argentière-la-Bessée. We then started our 20-minute walk to the chalet. First we stopped off at a grocery store. We bought lots of food and drinks--I’m telling this because it’s important to the story. We filled our roller bag to the top with canned food and other necessities. Then, we headed off to our chalet. We couldn’t be happier! But five minutes into our walk, we were sweating and it was an uphill climb. I had the canned food and my duffle bag on my back. My girlfriend had her bag and the roller bag of food.

Then we started to take a road that was going up the mountain. Makes senses our chalets in the mountains, right? But after ten minutes, it was clear that the road was not going to our destination. We stopped off at this pit stop right next to a big lumberjack statue over looking the valley. We sat there overlooking the valley and I say to my girlfriend, “You know I think that’s our chalet down there.”

So we sat there for a little while thinking of what we should do. I suddenly remembered the owners of the chalet gave me a number of a taxi service. We called them and tried to explain to the taxi driver where we were in French. But all we could say is, “We are by the big man! The man statue!” He did not understand us. We tried so hard to give him a description of where we were but he could not understand. It looked like our only option was to back track. However, that was going to take an hour! We decided we could probably walk down this hillside and make it there in twenty minutes, heavy luggage in tow. Walking down this little hillside turned into scaling down a mountainside. We made it to the bottom of the mountain with food and drink intact, but the roller bag lost both of its wheels.

We looked to see how far we were from our chalet and we and the most humongous hill we walked down. Our roller bag could no longer roll and it was filled with cans and other loads of heavy food! We were literally grinding it along the road. After a little upset and me laughing at this whole sittuation, I saw this man leave his house. I ran over to get directions to the chalet, which was just right up the road. We finally made it to the chalet! It was a great accomplishment!

 

 

It was a great trip with an interesting beginning for my friend and I. Getting lost made it that much more memorable for both of us.