While Mathilde was in Vancouver for Christmas vacation, I took her to the Vancouver Aquarium. This sparked an idea in her head and she surprised me yesterday by taking me to the Reserve Africaine in Sigean, France. It’s pretty much like a big zoo, but it’s a bit different. The first part of the reserve is a drive only part. You’re pretty much like on a safari, you drive through their habitats and there’s no fences so the animals could come right up to your car. The first animal that we saw was a huge ostrich, I quickly rolled up my window as to not be pecked to death.

After the first ostrich, we kept driving and saw a bunch of wildebeest on the left. This reminded me so much of “The Lion King”. I’m not really sure why, but it’s probably because of the scene of Simba running through the canyon being chased…

All the animals are contained in huge fields. There are cattle guards on the exits so that the animals can’t exactly escape. The giraffe’s were behind some water for some reason. I’m assuming it’s because they get scared or something?

After the first loop, we continued onto the bears and lions. For this part, they clearly state (in 8 languages no doubt) that you cannot roll down your windows OR stop when the animals are close. I guess the bears will climb all over your car because they’re curious. The bears were hard to find, but there was a momma and cup just chillin’ in a tree near the end of the loop.

The lions were similar to the bears, they were hard to find. They were near the middle of the loop, mostly just sleeping in the sun. I wish they would’ve walked around, or fought or something, but I guess it must be pretty boring watching cars go by all day…

After we left the lion’s loop, there’s a 3rd loop and it’s called the “Savana”. The first animals we saw were 3 white rhinos, they were also sleeping but they were cool! I think it’s the first time I’ve seen this animal!

As we continued the course, there were 30 zebras scattered along the road. They literally walked so close to the cars that you could reach out and touch them. Me being allergic to horses made me resist the temptation. That being said, I found out something very interesting about zebras. The only hair that grows on zebras is the “dark” part of the fur… weird eh?

The other part of the reserve is a self guided part. You get out of your car and walk around. The first animal we saw were little monkeys. I didn’t get a good picture, but on some of the female monkeys, you can see little baby monkeys strapped to their back. I guess they chill there until they’re old enough to fend for themselves or hunt or something?

Another animal I saw for the first time was a wallaby. Now I want to see a full grown Kangaroo!

While we were on a giant loop on foot, we saw this big cage full of what looked like ostrich’s, they weren’t but I forget the name. One was challenging me, so I tried to scare it, it didn’t budge…

I found that one of the most fascinating animals at this reserve were these huge turtles. They’re just so captivating, you watch them for 5 minutes, and they’re moved like 10 feet. I watched this one baby turtle for probably 30 minutes. He was eating an apple, then did a loop of about 15 feet, they tried the apple again, they switched to a tomato… I can only guess that that was the dad or mom or some parental figure beside him/her.

Although elephants are less interesting now that I’ve gotten to ride one in Thailand, it was still pretty cool seeing just how big they are. There was another one with enormous tusks, but it ran away before I could get a good picture of it.

Just as we were leaving the park, we drove past the bear loop again and they were all hanging out on the road… I’m not sure why, it was really hot already, but it was pretty funny just watching them mope around so close to the entrance of the loop.

That’s the end of my little trip. Now back to climbing I guess. Yesterday, I drove from Toulouse to Paris… 7 hours. Today, Mathilde is training while I’m resting because of the World Cup tomorrow. Tonight, we’re going to head to Eindhoven and tomorrow the competition starts…

I created a twitter account a few weeks ago, and I’ve decided to share it with the world. I’ll be trying to update it as much as possible. This is kind of an experiment for me. I know I’m online so often at school, I’m sure I can take a minute to update my twitter.

You can go to my twitter page by clicking HERE or you can follow the link on the sidebar at the right.

This past week in Vancouver had some of the most epic weather of the year. Last Wednesday, it rained for almost the whole day. I guess rain isn’t that uncommon in Vancouver. Come to think of it, it didn’t just rain; it was hailing for a few hours and actually sticking to the ground. After the hail was done, it rained some more and made it look as though it had been snowing… Thursday and Friday was absolutely amazing weather, sunny, no rain, almost like it was summer again. I can’t wait for it to actually start snowing so I can try to cram skiing and snowboarding into my already hectic schedule.

At the beginning of the year, I found out that I could buy a season’s pass for Whistler/Blackcomb for only 400$. I seriously debated it and ended up not getting one. I’m pretty happy I made that decision. If I had a Whistler pass, I’d feel obliged to use it and because I do 3 hours of homework a night, it would be pretty hard to get up there as much as I’d want to.

3rd note is SBC is this weekend!! I’m so excited; I haven’t done a bouldering competition since the Tout-A-Blocs back in France in late July. I also haven’t been training too much bouldering so it’ll pretty interesting. When I got home from Europe, I wanted to stay in route form so I could do Dreamcatcher. Once I sent that, I started bouldering but last Tuesday I ended up hurting my arm. I think I just trained too hard on Tuesday because I tried climbing on Wednesday and it hurt soooo much after only an hour of climbing. I iced it, did some abs, and went home. I tried to climb again on Thursday and got about an hour and a half before it started hurting again. I rested for another two days and went climbing last night for a couple of hours without it hurting at all. As for SBC, it’s probably my favourite competition of the fall. The atmosphere is great and they always set 100+ new problems.

After SBC, I’ll have another two weeks of school, then finals, then Christmas Vacation!! It seems as though this semester went by pretty fast and at the same time, I can’t believe how much new material I’ve learned. I’ve learned how to program in Java, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and I’m just starting to learn PHP. Sometimes, when a new language gets introduced I get lost, but because I ask a ton of questions to my teachers and friends, usually I catch on quickly a bit later. As much as I like learning at school, I can’t wait for the Christmas holidays to start. I also know I start holidays almost a week before most other schools. My last exam will be on Dec 11th!