France: The alps

   When we got to france we drove from Paris to Arzon in Brittany, which takes about 5 hours. We spent the night at my grandparents' house, we then drove to the alps on the other side of the country.

 

   We stayed in a very small flat and walked around the village of samoëns to go rent our gear. I liked how there were a lot of little specialty shops instead of one big supermarket. Every night at the village there were animations; one night there were alpine horns that we got to play, another night there was bingo. The last night we went to a restaurant called La Clarine and had fondue, it was really good.

mont blanc in the background

   I took two lessons; a discovery lesson, and a freestyle lesson. On the discovery lesson we went on slopes we had not done before such as a red called marmottes. On the freestyle lesson I learned how to position for the jumps, and boxes, it was really fun.

Paragliding

   

   One of the days we went paragliding. You could do it on skis or on foot. For the take off you just ski and then you're flying, it's amazing! Once you take off you just sit there and enjoy the view. Right before the landing we did some aerobatics. I was really excited afterwards.

   There is a really long blue run called les cascades, it is 14km long. It is really fun but kind of hard. While we were on it we saw the military training.

About to go on les cascades

 

danger!

   

In the end this whole thing has been a great experience, and I hope I can come back some day.

Johannesburg: Nature Reserves

    Johannesburg and its surroundings have a lot of nature reserves and I went to a couple.

    We visited a place where  you could pet baby leopards, white lions, and white tigers. There was also a really big owl, baby fennec foxes and lots of snakes and reptiles. In the predators department we saw cheetah, lions, white lions, and hyena. Petting the baby leopards was really cool, their names were Luke and Leia. My dad had his glasses stolen by Leia and she would not let go. She also scratched my dad, her claws were sharp! But the animal that there was the most of were ground squirrels.

Ground Squirrels

Petting Leia 

    We also went to a place called monkeyland. At monkeyland monkeys could climb on you. But we had to watch out because some monkeys were pickpockets. Monkeyland is a place where they take monkeys that were abandoned or are in danger and keep them. The smallest monkey there was the squirrel monkey. There was a monkey that stole some tissues from my pocket. Another one peed on one of the visitors in our group!

Monkey grooming my mom

Monkey eating seeds

South Africa's nature reserves are really cool you should go if you have a chance!