Canyoning

Today was a day like no other. 
We were up early to walk down to the bakery and market in the village of Saint-Jeannet for beautiful fresh croissants and delicious fruit.
After a quick breakfast, we met Benoit our tour guide for a 4 hour canyoning adventure.  Well, adventure it was.  Our 2 families enjoy doing active outings on holidays but we all agreed that the tour today was by far, without question the most thrilling, exciting, crazy, adventurous thing any of us have ever, ever done!!
We set out on a 45 minute drive from our village up into the mountains.

Once we arrived it was a 20 minutes walk down to the start of the canyon.  Here we all suited up in wetsuits and helmets and jumped into the water.  At +32c, just getting into the wetsuits was a challenge, but the suits were needed as the water was only about +5c. 
We thought we knew what the tour was going to be like ~ floating down the canyon through the water with a few places to jump in to the deeper parts.  What we didn't understand was the number of rock slides we would go down and the unbelievable scenery that we would experience.

The canyon was very deep in some places which allowed us to do a lot of "cliff" jumping.  The kids absolutely loved every minute of it.

Ang, Jordyn, Evan, Paige, Read and Karen in a cave at the bottom of our first jump.

There were a few parts where we had to rappel down the narrow rocks before we could make the jump.

Evan getting ready to take the plunge with the help of Benoit.

This is what we were jumping in to.

 Jordyn on her way down the natural waterslide.  The kids didn't ever hesitate.  All of them were so willing to get right in and experience all that they could.

We made our way through these rocks by climbing and floating.

Me ~ not at all looking graceful on my way down!!

 This was the craziest challenge of the tour.  We started sliding down a rock slide on our backs for a couple of meters and then we dropped down the waterfall about 4 meters into a deep pool below. 

 Our final challenge was a rappel down the rocks and a 2 meter jump.

 It is a day we will never forget and truly a once in a lifetime experience.  We were so glad we were able to experience it with amazing friends!!

At the end of the tour we went back to the village to buy groceries, as we hadn't stocked up yet.  Funny thing is the grocery stores are all closed on Sundays ~ who knew?!?!
Ang and Jeff used the veggies that were in the gift basket when we arrived and thankfully we happened to find a box of pasta in the back of the cupboard.  Dinner was amazing.