Yes, and we still cannot for the life of us figure out how the frosty this happened; on the day we visited Cassis we set out to traverse a foreign countryside without a cent on us. Not a sausage. Although we did have beer, Gary pipes up as I type this. In our defence, we did have about 6 credit cards between us and we had used these successfully on French toll roads in the past. Anyway, on that particular day the French were having none of it. It will be a while before I forget that sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach as yet another harried French vehicle in the searing midday heat pulled up in the now rapidly growing queue behind us and the toll machine rudely spat out our credit card YET AGAIN onto Gary’s lap. ‘Carde payment non possible’. Hhmm, Nedbank? Non possible. Investec? Non possible. Discovery? Non possible. Realizing where this path was now going, we quickly moved to the obvious next step: piling out the car, opening all the doors (and the boot for extra dramatic effect) and searching the floor of General de Gaulle on our hands and knees searching for ANYTHING that resembled a coin.
After coming across a few empty cans, tons of maps and a bottle of jam, we also had a small handful of coins and returned to the machine where the assistant, who had by now been called out of her air-conditioned booth, needed some explaining from us. After a frantic conversation via Charades, we had eventually convinced her that yes, none of our cards would work we had in fact tried that and no sorry, we really did get onto a national freeway without having even 2 Euros 60 on us. Plying her with whatever we had, she grumpily (but granted, very generously) accepted our symbolic payment and hurriedly waved us through.
After a few mandatory high-fives and victorious fist pumps, we turned back to the car and decided that the only responsible course of action after our very lucky break would be to take the very next off-ramp, find a little town and a working ATM and withdraw some … bugger! ANOTHER FRIGGING TOLLGATE! We were now truly caught between a rock and a hard place … I wanna see you try to ‘undrive’ a road you just sped through! Of course, ‘The Enforcer' at the last stop had taken our clammy 1 Euro 10 and immediately radioed the next gate to warn them of our imminent and bankrupt arrival. As I began to strategize just how strong those boom gates could really be, the full facts dawned on us - we now owed the French state more cash and had absolutely nothing on our persons. More credit cards into the machine, more non possible and even more irate drivers behind us hooting at the idiotic tourists from the last stop holding everyone up again. At least we did the honourable thing and pretended to get out of the vehicle and search for coins. Gary then began an epic episode of sweet-talking and the tollgate assistant here, either motivated by pity for two tourists or sympathy for two idiots (maybe both) took a coin I had found lodged under the aircon and waved us through the second gate. As we high-tailed it at some speed into the distance, I did notice him man hurriedly taking down our details. I just hope we don’t get held at the airport and blacklisted …
Well, the story doesn’t quite end there. After searching the surrounds of cassis for hours in a car taking out its revenge against its drivers by simulating the greenhouse effect, we finally found a municipal parking lot outside the city which had a bus taking people into the town and back to the parking. Perfect! Not thinking twice, we hopped on. It was really and truly only once we had taken up our seats and the bus started creaking down the hill that we realized this trip would cost us 2 Euros each. More of Gary’s famous sweet-talking and an armed escort from the bus to the ATM to pay the toll and we were safely in Cassis. I have never been escorted as a suspected flight risk, but luckily our guard realized that two such incompetent people were unlikely to make a great escape and chuckled at our luck.
And then there was Monarco and my first real near arrest.
To be continued …
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