A wonderful girl ! I could stop here, but you would be frustrated...

Blond hair, green eyes, freckles that darken in the sun ! You might say I'm not objective for describing her, but I might mostly forget all those little things... I'll let you discover what she is like througout our trip.

She likes : reading and sleeping ; having breakfast in bed ; late-afternoon tea ; sunsets on the ocean ; fishes of all colors, big and small. preferably under the surface ; a nice hot bath with a book and plastic ducks floating around ; but above all... go all the way to the end of what she undertakes.

She doesn't like : being tickled ; being stressed up ; not feeling up to the task ; getting out of a warm bed ; when I saw or repair things inside and make a dirty mess ; but above all... being in a situation she cannot control.

Some of her traits :

- Reading allows her to survive, a real drug for her, if I am fool enough to hide her present book she'll start another, I have built some shelves just for her books ! If I had to be jealous, it would be of these sheets of paper... she spends all her time with them. In short, it's going to be a hard thing for Amanda during this trip, since room and weight will be limited, so I think a moral help will be essential.

- Sleeping in foetal position, 9 hours per night, wherever she is... Yes, even in our little two-persons tent... guess how ???... I put her in a corner of the sleeping bag !

- Like a fish in the water. She was brought up on the coast in Marseilles, her childhood holidays were all on Nepthys, her parents' (Simone and Geoff) sailboat, she prefers water to air ! So I had to try, my diving diploma (level II) is nealry validated ! aahhh, water and me...

- A true blonde ! Just look at the photo ! Shampoos, conditionner...she'll have to make compromises for the trip !

- Let's get to the sensitive point. Our limited number of luggage enforces a minimum of organization and here is the problem ! I'm sure it's still possible to loose stuff inside our own bags !!! I won't say more...

- Amanda's kindness is sometimes... this young lady always finds excuses for everyone ! OK, but she also finds excuses when there aren't any ! After a while, it's getting difficult to argue... nearly annoying sometimes ! I'm also working on it...

- A will of steel, brave, determined and sometimes stubborn, an impressive and disconcerting quality. For example : while climbing a 320 meters wall in the Alps (let's note that Amanda is afraid of heigths, but determination and obstination have won the battle !), despite everything she was still panicking, and I proposed her to rappel down slowly, but her emotion and her will had taken over : it was out of question ! Disconcerting, isn't it ? (we finished the climb, of course !).

- Doctor Amanda ! impressive ! At 22 she already had the "agregation", the higest teaching diploma, not even talking about the "grandes Ecoles" she entered... I harldy dared talk to her at the beginning, but no, Amanda knows how to stay simple and natural, she has brains but no swollen head, a quality I particularly enjoy !

- At the University, her classes are famous, whatever the topic is : reasons why men are genetically unfaithful, cheaters in the animal kingdom, altruism explained by genes.... students listen to her and look at her with wide eyes when she mimics the descent of the egg in the hen's genital tract, the penguin calling his chick or the whistling dolphin... so that she can share her passion for behavioural ecology ! Of course students never forget ! One of them thanked her one day for sharing this passion, her lessons have made her reorient her studies towards this topic...

In short, Amanda is my other half, my life sharing hers... I'm happy.