...and then came the forest fire

Montpellier (week 3)

The GPS in the car advertises the trip from Carcassonne to Montpellier to be 1.5 hours "without traffic."  We were warned that the last weekend of July/first weekend of August is the busiest on the roads of France, because everyone takes either the month of July or to month of August off.  Thus, everyone in France is on the road this weekend, so we knew the trip would take longer.

However, we were unprepared for the police convoy.  We are not sure what they were convoying, but it was 4 police trucks (perhaps carrying prisoners?) with lead and chase cars.  For a few kilometres around each highway exit they would drive abreast across the 3 lanes of traffic to prevent anyone overtaking them - and the trucks typically drove 90 km/h in a 130 zone.  We finally got past that and a presumably unrelated jam at a toll booth, and were nearing Montpellier.  Then Yolanda said, "Hey, look at that smoke up there!"

Sure enough, smoke was billowing across the highway from somewhere up ahead.  Traffic slowed and then stopped.  No cars were coming from the opposite (westbound) lanes.  Planes and helicopters circled overhead, including what looked like at least 4 waterbombers.  It turns out a forest fire (probably more what we would call a wildfire) closed the road, eventually for 6 hours (and 200 km of stopped cars).  Luckily, we were near a point where the police opened a U-turn lane through the guardrail separating the eastbound from the westbound lanes, so we were only in that jam for about an hour, but of course we then had to drive back towards Carcassonne and find a new route to Montpellier.

Having finally reached the hotel after several hours on the hot highway (the temperature again was in the low-mid 30s C), the boys closed the swimming pool at the hotel - finally getting out at 10:30pm.

The  next day's activity was the Montpellier zoo, billed as the 2nd-largest in France. Unfortunately, due to construction of new habitats, it's location in hilly terrain, and 35C by 10:30 am all conspired to prevent the boys from seeing many of the animals in the outdoor pens.  They did enjoy the indoor "Amazonia" exhibit, though.  They also did their Grandpa proud by again convincing their mother to let them have Magnum ice cream bars before setting out for "home"  in Puyloubier.