May 16, 2024
Montignac-Lascaux
It was a roller coaster day, one filled with highs and lows and unexpected events that got everyone’s heart beating just a little faster.
The day had arrived for the long-anticipated visit to Lascaux IV and the International Centre of Parietal Art. The Lascaux Cave was discovered near the small town of Montignac in 1940 by Marcel Ravida, an 18-year old boy whose dog Robot exposed the entrance to the cave while digging near an uprooted tree. Thinking that the cave might contain a cache of riches from the Hundred Years War, Marcel came back the following day with three friends equipped with ropes and ladders. The foursome descended into the cave where they discovered not gold but a treasure of prehistoric art - more than 600 paintings in reds, yellows and black covering the cave walls.
The Lascaux Cave was opened to the public in 1948 but the impact of up to 1,200 visitors per day introduced mold contaminants and increased levels of carbon dioxide that resulted in significant damage to the art. The cave was closed to the public in 1963. Over the next decades, replica caves were made that now allow us to experience the wondrous colored art work of the Lascaux cave. Lascaux II opened in 1983 at a site near the original discovery and contains exact replicas of two of the large chambers found in the original cave. The five reproductions of Lascaux III travel the world, while Lascaux IV is a full and exact replica of the original cave and is located within the International Centre of Parietal Art on the edge of Montignac, whose name was officially changed to Montignac-Lascaux in 2020.
I visited Lascaux II in 2017 during a trip to Dordogne with my sister Ann and her husband Jack. It was one of the most memorable experiences of my life. Though I’d seen drawings of the Lascaux animals on gift cards and posters, I will never forget the shock and awe as our small group entered The Hall of Bulls and were engulfed by vivid depictions of horses, bulls, and deer. At the time, I wanted the more intimate experience of Lascaux II but I have since heard great things about Lascaux IV and thought that there might be additional information in the museum that would be of interest to Leah and Suzie.
Our one hour English-language tour of Lascaux IV was scheduled for 11:10 and we planned to take an early bus from Sarlat, thinking it would give us time to explore the museum prior to our tour, leaving us the afternoon for a bike ride to Beynac if the weather was good. We had a little trouble finding the exact location of the bus stop and were dismayed when the bus pulled away just as we were running towards it, the driver shaking his right index finger back and forth in the universal signal of NO. The next bus was scheduled to originate at the train station 90 minutes later, so we wasted our time wandering through antique stores and drinking weak coffee.
We arrived at the museum about 20 minutes before our tour began and discovered that the gift shop was the only area accessible prior to the tour – catching the earlier bus would have been for naught. We milled around until our tour was announced, then picked up our audio set and waited for the group to assemble, about 25 in all. The tour started with some introductory remarks about the prehistoric time frame and environmental conditions that existed when the drawings were created and then we were in the Hall of Bulls, surrounded again with the vivid images of large mammals.
We proceeded through the other chambers, each time guide pointed out particular images or carvings considered to be especially significant. There was time for a few questions at the end, but most of the information was available through displays found in the other salons of the museum. These included variety of touch screen video recreations as well as large sections of the cave onto which the paintings had been reproduced. Additional salons and hallways featured displays/information/movies not only about Lascaux but also other caves throughout the world where prehistoric art has been discovered. The experience was a bit overwhelming for me, and similar to most museums I reached my maximum effective input after two hours. Lascaux IV is an amazing experience, but overall I preferred the more intimate setting of Lascaux II – but maybe that’s because your first cave is always the most special.
I caught up with Leah and Susie and we spent a little time in the gift shop, not really paying attention to the time. I happened to look outside just as a bus was pulling away – yes, we missed the bus back to Sarlat and the next one was not for another few hours. That torpedoed any thoughts we had of visiting Beynac that afternoon, and so we headed into town for lunch.
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It was almost 2 pm when we entered a small bistro in Montignac, nearing the time they stopped serving. After checking with the kitchen staff, the waitress agreed to seat us, making room by pulling a table from other customers to create a four-top for us. There were only a handful of other tables in the small space, but each was filled with diners in the latter stages of their mid-day meal. We were translating the menu when Susie suddenly turned around in her chair, causing me to look up just as the man seated behind her slouched in his chair. His head dropped back and he slid to the floor. Everyone in the bistro stood up, alarmed and wondering what to do. Everyone that is except Susie.
Susie is a physical therapist trained in CPR – she even teaches CPR classes. She immediately dropped to her knees to cradle the man and put him in a prone position. She rolled up her jacket, placing it under the man’s head while holding his hand and talking gently to him. Not knowing French, we set up a translation chain between me and the man’s dining companion to ask if he knew his name and/or other salient facts. At first, he could not recall either his name nor his daughter’s name. The waitress called for the ambulance, and while on the phone with paramedics she repeated the same questions that Susie had asked. After a few minutes, the man was able to recall his name, even spelling it out. He was able to sit up, smiling at Susie while still holding her hand and, as I later learned, squeezing her flank. Eventually, the ambulance arrived, the restaurant cleared, and we calmed down enough to enjoy our lunch.
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6 months ago
Susie had picked up a bus schedule at the train station that morning, which indicated the next bus to Sarlat departed from Montignac at 4:24, more than an hour after we finished lunch. We split up and agreed to meet at the Tourist Information Office at 4 – I spent my time wandering around and taking photos while Susie and Leah browsed the local shops. We arrived at the bus stop at Place Touney about 4:10 and I confirmed with a storekeeper that this was indeed the stop for the bus to Sarlat. We waited patiently and bit anxiously as the minutes ticked by, noting more than once how prompt the buses had been. We were the only ones at the bus stop, and I wished for another rider to come by and reassure us that we had the right place and time.
It was past 4:30 when Dominique arrived, on her way to Perigeaux, not Sarlat. We were shocked when she informed us that we had been misreading the bus schedule - the 4:26 bus was in the column for the holiday schedule, designated by a small superscript 2. The next bus to Sarlat on the regular schedule (superscript 1) was not for another two hours!!
We had seen most of what interested us in Montignac and certainly did not want to spend two hours at a bus stop. I was especially upset as there was an Orange boutique in Sarlat where I'd hope to get the problem with my phone straightened out – the next bus would not arrive in Sarlat before the store closed at 7 pm. And so we called a taxi – it would pick us up in 30 minutes and there would be another 30 minutes to Sarlat at a cost of around €50. Sold.
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| Heart | 2 | Comment | 0 | Link |
The taxi dropped me off at the Orange boutique while Susie and Leah walked back to the apartment and did some shopping for a picnic dinner at the apartment. The folks at Orange said that they could do nothing for me – I was in the system but they didn’t work with Travel Plans. I could get a regular, non-contract plan like any other French resident but as appealing as that thought was, it required documentation I didn’t have at the time. I kept probing as to how I might address the issue and eventually got a smile from the service clerk. She connected me with the store WiFi and asked me to take her through the top-up steps and demonstrate what/where the problem was. And then it all worked – my payment went through and I had data for another 30 days. I gave her a big smile, told her she was a magician, and left the store with no idea of what had just happened. But my French phone plan was working!
Dinner was a relaxed and eclectic affair. Susie and Leah had bought a bottle of wine and demonstrated the proper rituals of swirling, sniffing, and sipping that they had learned during their wine tour in Saint-Émilion. We munched on an assortment of cheese, nuts, salad, fruit and veg as we recalled the all of the events of this truly amazing day.
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