After the morning at the Parc National and the pique-nique, we go down to Gèdre and Millaris, which houses l' Office du Tourisme and a very interesting interactive présentation de la culture, l'histoire and la géographie de la région.
We end the day at la Centrale Hydroélectrique de Pragnères, which is the largest in Europe, and produces électricité through processing the water of the Gave de Gavarnie, the local river. When it was built in the 1950's, it was the largest construction site ever, with 20,000 workers in permanence there for 8 years! They had to built a little city, with cement factories for the building of the dam, and housing for all the workers! In France, hydroélectricity represents 20% of all electricity produced, with the remaining 80% coming from nuclear plants. The plant at Pragneres can start producing electricity within 3 minutes, where a nuclear plant takes about three hours! It is also green energy, and the whole valley, because in part of the Unesco designation, is completely green.
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