Tepacap

Before B and I had our week vacation with Sam, I spent a Sunday at Tepacap, a ropes course about 45 minutes outside of Toulouse. There are several around France, as I discovered (and of course other chains have other locations).

I went with a group of people from AVF (plus some younger siblings who were on vacation) and at 11 we were able to benefit from the group price of 20€ for unlimited access all day.

It was a ton of fun climbing among the trees and then sailing down zip lines, which I learned is called a tyrolienne in French.

The park had lockers for people to put their car keys and money, but they told us to put our lunches on the picnic table we wanted as a way to reserve it in advance and that it would be safe. It was kind of cool that everyone left their water bottles and picnic baskets out. I had to laugh at lunch time because the ropes courses were closed from 12:30 to 1:30 so that everyone could eat. Only in France is an amusement park closed for lunch.

There were 15 parcours, going from easy to hard. Number 15 started with a fire pole you had to climb up about 4 meters to a platform. A number of people in my group tried, and I was really proud to be one of only two who made it up! I didn't continue the rest of 15 because you had to swing monkey-bar style from dangling rings to make it to another platform, and 1) I was really tired from climbing the fire-pole and 2) the first ring was set for people with longer arms and I didn't feel up to jumping out to reach it. As we passed in front of 15 during the day, there were oftentimes groups of young athletic guys trying to climb to pole, but they invariably failed. I think the bigger and bulkier you are, the more difficult it is to lift your own body. The other guy in my group who made it up was about 35 and he said it was such an ego boost to see the young guys giving up half-way.

One of the younger siblings was Dany, who will have started 5ème this week. He was really sweet and it was fun to listen to a kid talk about life in middle school and list the bugs he was afraid of (I forget the placement scorpions got). He told me he wanted to live in Lyon one day because lions were one of his favorite animals.

At the end of the day I was really pooped, and my left quadriceps started hurting funny because of the fire-pole climb. It was a great day though. I had to think back to the last time I'd done a ropes course, and I think it was at Girl Scout camp between 4th and 5th grade, but everything is organized so that you don't have to have any particular skills or experience (well, some muscles would help). Next summer it'd be great to go back.