Panache: La Vallee des Singes (Monkey Valley)

Friday morning my entire class met downstairs at 6:00 a.m. (yes, you read that right) to go on our excursion to La Vallee des Singes. We had to catch a train for our 2 1/2 hour ride to Poitiers, which is all the way in the middle of the country (the same place where Diane de Poitiers came from, the lady with all the castles!) The Vallee was one hour-long bumpy bus ride from there.

I had never ridden the TGV before (it was on strike when I was supposed to ride it in seventh grade), so that was pretty exciting. We were going so fast the pressure made my ears hurt when we went through tunnels.

The high-speed train

Half asleep early in the morning

But it was well worth the trip! The Vallee is more of a sanctuary for monkeys than a zoo. There are no fences, so the monkeys can run free. Luckily they have the apes on their own islands. I wouldn't want to be walking among loose gorillas, thank you very much. The funniest monkeys were the capuchins--they were quite mischievous. At one point a keeper had to bawl one out, saying, "Chico! Qu'est-ce que tu fait, la?!" One got his paws on my camera, and I had to yank it away. Another jumped on my friend's messenger bag.

We had to write an essay about one of the apes, so I spent a long time talking (in French!) to the gibbon keeper. Gibbons are my new favorite type of ape. Did you know that they are monogamous?

Let the monkey photos commence...

Baby gorilla nursing

My favorite--the gibbons! This is Charlotte and her son, Tokay

The group watching the chimps

Professor Tuttle kind of looks like a gangster


A gelada--a really rare type of monkey that lives in the mountains and eats grass

Me with lemurs. See? No fences!

Monkey feeding time

In addition to all the cool animal stuff, I had a great time with my group. I think we have finally gelled as a class and with our professor, so our group has a really good dynamic. We kept pretending we were a gorilla troupe, with Professor Tuttle as our silverback leader. One of the two boys in our class was supposed to be the blackback gorilla who kept trying to hold a coup and steal power. The silliness continued during the chimp feeding. While we were watching, Professor Tuttle crouched down and pretended to be a chimp. The real chimp saw him, got really mad, and started throwing clods of dirt at us!

I guess Professor Tuttle doesn't read signs...

Aw, what a cute group! Complete with gorillas in the background...

We had lunch at a lovely restaurant in the village of Romagne. It was all really well-made "country" food, with terrine de campanile for starters, duck for meal, and apple tart for dessert. The chef had a homemade liqueur made out of blackthorn berries that we all tried. One of my friends wanted to buy a bottle to give to her mom, since she wanted something local rather than fancy. She was expecting to pay through the nose, but the chef gave it to her for free! I helped her mail it off today.