We stayed on the property of Benoit's girlfriend's Mom's gite (French B&B), again in the Le Lot region, very close to where stayed a couple weeks ago. Her Mom is 79 years old and runs this place basically by herself. She was full of energy. She surprised Randi and I when showing up in town, while we were shopping for groceries. And then we'd get back to her place and she was there already...she was everywhere! She only speaks French, so it was a little difficult to communicate with her but she still made us feel very welcome and we could see she was a wonderful lady. She was hosting not only her B&B customers but Benoit's 6 frinds, including us and a lot of family (Nadine's brothers, sister, cousins, nieces, nephews). The farm itself was originally a 250 yr old hunting lodge and has a nice history to it. They have several different buildings on the property. It SO reminded us of the cabin on Clear Lake in Pequot Lakes, MN, with people sleeping everywhere and us tent camping in the yard... but it's a LOT older and it's in France of course.
The event everyone was there for was the Africajarc festival, in the small town of Cajarc. It is a well-known annual festival there, that raises the normal town population of 1000 people to about 20,000 people for the weekend.
During the day there were outdoor food markets, as well as Africa related clothing, jewelry and art for sale.
As the evening started there were a few different smaller stages with bands playing unusual instruments with a jungle beat. We had tickets for the big stage on Saturday night to see a few bands, including the reggae man Alpha Blondy. He was pretty entertaining. One of his encores was a cover of Pink Floyd's 'I Wish You Were Here'...it was cool. Everybody loves that tune. Speaking of which....anyone who is reading this right now, I could say to you honestly, "I wish you were here".Benoit had informed us, during the concert, that we would all be eating homemade French onion soup, when we returned to Mom's house, after the show!! ...say what?
I thought maybe I didn't hear him right but sure enough, after the show, at around 2:30am, there were around 20 friends and relatives, sitting in the brick building that served both as a large dining room and sleeping quarters, all waiting for soup. It was incroyable !! The soup had been simmering all night while we were at the show. When we returned I watched as Nadine finished preparing it by pouring the soup into a pan that had many layers of a hard crusted bread and large grated cheese. It was really phenomenal. I dare say magnifique ! It was the best french onion soup we've ever had. And, believe it or not, they served more wine!! I was amazed by the complete buy-in by everyone there, for soup and wine at 3am. It really was superbe. The final highlight of the weekend was the 3 1/2 hour lunch on Sunday before we left.
We had made really several trips with them the day before and on that day, going to the markets to buy food for this event and everything again was very good. We had a couple pastis before lunch and then wine with lunch.
Then afterward Benoit poured shots of some type of liquor into everyone's mouths, one by one. He tried to fill my entire big mouth and then purposely poured over the side of my mouth and everyone enjoyed that. But his girlfriend Nadine got him back with the same treatment. 
It was fun. Luckily we ate enough to counter the liquor before driving back to Toulouse later in the afternoon. We all enjoyed the day of eating and drinking. The French take their meals very seriously and it's really fun to watch it unfold and be a part of it.
