Well France Meteo has obviously got the forecast wrong. No rain today. 20C and not a cloud in the sky. No more procrastination! Much to the relief of our aching joints there's no skiing planned today. We are off to do the food shopping in Cluses and undertake the tricky french task of booking Pepi in for his 10,000 scheduled service. We also have to turn our minds to shipping all our excess luggage back to NZ - groan!
2/ Farmhouse #2
Catching up with Marie this morning, she has given us a fright. She expects that the scheduled service will be about E300. A little naively, we really hadn't given the cost much thought. We are now kicking ourselves that we didn't hand back the car before the service was due and make other transport arrangements. Rick had offered to loan us one of his cars on many occasions. We're feeling a little foolish now.
Rehearsing our french all the way to Cluses "Je voudrais reserve la revision dix mille kilometre pour notre voiture" . The young man at the service counter spoke little English and he shook his head explaining something negative in rapid-fire french. The major flaw with our french is that we also rehearse an expected reply and our subsequent interactions. But when we are thwarted from the beginning with a totally unexpected answer we're in trouble. We were in trouble now.
We pulled out all our bits of paper, the Carte Grise (Registration Papers), our lease with Peugot, contract with Drive Away Australia, the car manual, our passports....his desk was now strewn with important official looking documents. This was sure to impress the young lad that we new what we were about. But no, he was still shaking his head. This was not going at all well.
After 15 minutes of frustrated conversation from our young lad and totally confused responses on our part, we finally figured out that he couldn't do a 10,000km service because the first service for our model wasn't until 20,000km. Aaahaa....."maintenant, nous comprendon!" An unexpected result but hopefully a good one. We still had a problem because our contract with Peugeot/ Drive Away Australia clearly required a 10,000km service. But this was hardly the nice young man's problem. Thanking him profusely and leaving him with a bemused expression on his face and a good story for his morning tea break, we retreated gracefully taking all our bits of paper with us.
Back at Le Refuge after our shopping trip, we have contacted Drive Away Australia, (who fortunately for us, are fluent in English) to ask for a clarification of the conflicting contract terms. Fingers crossed we will be spared E300! If not, we will get them to do battle with our Peugeot Service office. They can try and explain to our young man in Cluses how to do a unscheduled scheduled service!
Next hurdle....the luggage. We really would prefer to travel without our skis if at all possible. A few weeks ago, we had contacted AirNZ about unaccompanied baggage and also been to Geneva Airport to see the airfreight people there. But the skis could only be shipped to Christchurch and we'd have to organise a customs clearance ourselves. Major hassle.
Scouring the internet well into the evening, we tried all the usual suspects DHL, UPS, FedEx only to find that when we entered the dimensions & weight of our ski package the quote was over E2,000. Surely this was a mistake. I know that NZ is close to the South Pole, but not that close!! No nearer to a solution, we have decided to enlist Marie's help and see if she would be kind enough to contact a number of our leads and explain our requirements in French.
Breaking our frustrating shipping search we joined Rick and Liz for an early dinner of Fajitas and an Italian debrief of our time in Livigno. I think we have inspired them to go to La Skieda next year.
They are also going to Italy in June. Renting a gorgeous house in Umbria, they will be joined by some UK friends for a cycling training camp. Both Rick and Liz are involved in cycling events over the summer. Riding from Paris to Geneva, Tour de France or some such ridiculous length of ride!
What is it with our age group? Is it a realisation of our impending mortality? Mid-life crises? What? All the news we hear from home is about friends joining running clubs, cycling around or swimming across lakes and... god forbid running marathons. Makes Graeme and I want to lie down and have a nice cup of tea. But we can't escape even here in France the land of sensible things like red wine and cheese fondue....Rick & Liz have also caught the biking bug.
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