Wonderology: Cave Art & Hitchhiking

Back in November, my friend Joe and I decided to take a trip to see the world reknowned Lascaux caves. If you haven’t heard of these famous caves, it's okay, they’re only famous in certain circles. These grottes are the location of some of the best known upper paleolithic art; a.k.a. cave paintings. Joe, being an art history major, and myself, being a physical anthropology major, found this site to be quite an attraction.

We hadn’t done much prior research on getting to Lascaux but I feel that what we did look at should have reccomended that we drive a car rather than take a train. When we arrived at the reccomended train stop, we found ourselves in a tiny fog-filled village, early enough in the morning that the shops weren't even open yet. We walked around the town a bit, trying to find an information office of any kind, but all we found was a small farmer's market. I’m sure the villagers were surprised to see anyone under the age of 40 in their town by the way they all starred at us.

Eventually we found an office where we were told that we would need to take a taxi because the caves were 10km (6.2 miles) away. How to find a taxi? They didn’t know. A bit frustrated, we walked back towards the train station and spotted an off duty taxi parked in a parking lot. We stood, like creepers, in the parking lot and wait for the driver to arrive. Luckily, he agreed to take us to Lascaux even though he was in the middle of running his daily errands. After a few minutes we realized how far the caves were from the train station, but why didn’t the guide book mention anything about taking a taxi? The taxi takes us as far as the next town where we learn that we need to hike up to the caves. However, I was confused when we reached the top of the mountain, the location of the site, and found a parking lot with tourists getting out of cars. Why wouldn’t he take us to our end destination? Finally, we had made it to Lascaux, bought our tickets, and entered the cave with a group and a guide.

Besides the rubber floors and professional lighting, Lascaux II is an exact replica of the real Lascaux. Lascaux is gated off and entry is only allowed to suited up scientists who preserve the paintings. Inside the cave, the guide pointed out what types of animals were painted, how some paintings showed movement, and different techniques used. One thing I found interesting is that there were about three quadrangular shapes painted. They were randomly placed and quite small compared to the paintings but the fact that people 17,000 years ago used right angles was interesting. Afterwards, all I could think about is where squares and rectangles occur naturally in nature. I failed to come up with any real examples. Overall, the experience was pretty amazing. Although, I am still curious how they painted on the celing without having scaffolding to raise them up.

After the tour we stood outside the gates of Lascaux I and nerded out a bit just trying to catch a glimpse of the opening the cave. Then, we started our descent to the village. However, once we got to the village it was lunch time and everything was closed. We called the number that was on our first taxi but they said we were too far away for them to pick us up. We called another taxi company, they said something similar. So what were we to do? We were in what seemed to be a desserted town that we didn’t even know the name of, we had no transportation to get back to the train station, and we didn't have enough time to walk back. My suggestion: hitchhiking. Joe really didn’t like this idea but I figured it was our only chance and if driver seemed sketchy we could turn them down.

Only 6 minutes after sticking out our thumbs an older white-haired man pulls up and humorously warns us in French that hitchhiking is illegal. Joe takes the front seat and I take the... platform in the back, laying on my stomach. As it turns out, the man, Allen, was British and had been living in France for many years. He had a lot of stories to tell, like how he was a reporter during the Algerian war and witnessed one of the biggest massacres. He also had a lot of questions about the Occupy movement and the presidential elections in the United States (It seems that every person that finds out I’m from the United States wants to talk about the presidential elections, they think America is crazy!). I was enjoying every minute of it but I learned afterwards that Joe was ready to open the car door and do a tuck and roll at any moment.

We made it to our train and arrived back in Bordeaux just in time to get a slice of cake from the record breaking 200 meter bûche de Noël.