Luz Saint Saveur & Gavarnie

We left Luchon after four nights and drove over mountain roads to Luz Saint Saveur. The drive was mildly challenging for those of us with a fear of heights, which is me. I was not driving anyway near the road edges!

The highest point was the Col de Tourmalet at 2115 meters and we were surprised by the number of cyclists who ride up this route until we realized that we were following a stage route of the Tour de France in the reverse direction only a couple of weeks before the big event. Some of the cyclists were in teams with support vehicles!

We found a charming little hotel in Luz, the Hotel de Templiers, which proved to be an excellent base for exploring the area. The owners speak English and are happy to give advice about where to go and what to see. We walked into the Cirque de Gavarnie and gazed at the highest waterfall in Europe at 423 meters. We had bemoaned our failure to see a marmot at the hotel and they suggested we visit the Cirque de Troumouse as that was a well known haunt of the rodents. As this was quite close to Gavarnie we decided to end the day by driving up into this cirque. The GPS showed an altitude of 2091 meters when we parked at the top but we couldn't see much because the cloud extended down to 2000 meters. After a brief and clammy walk around in the clouds we decided to give up the search for marmots and come back another year. By this time the cloud had thickened enough to make the drive down a bit scary. I don't know which is worse, being able to see the 500 ft drop at the edge of the road or not being able to see the 500ft drop because of the fog!

After some 7 kilometers of very cautious driving we emerged from the clouds at an altitude of 1600 meters only to see a marmot sitting by the side of the road looking at us with an expression that clearly said "These humans are crazy". We didn't argue!