Skip to main content

No One Died

The area of Spain where we are at is not only famous for their beaches, but for their canyons. Today we had the opportunity to go explore one of those canyons. The adventure was in Benahavis, about 30 minutes from our Air BnB. We met up with our tour group on the side of the road a bit away from the canyon. Our guide was hoping we would be the first people in the canyon. We got outfitted into wet suits, harnesses, and helmets then we headed to the water.

Our guide, Sixto, lead us down to the river and had us join him in the river. We joined hands in a big circle and then knelt in the water. Sixto insisted that this was necessary to ensure no one died while in the canyon. We let the water run down our arms while breathing deeply. Then we all turned to the right and while saying "I love you" we dumped water down the back of the person in front of us. A few more deep breaths then we turned and did it again to the left. Then we got in nice and close and everyone got splashed a lot. It was a great way to get everyone nice and wet, ready for spending the next several hours in the river. Then Sixto snapped a few pictures of us and of the other group we were hiking with before we headed off on our adventure.



Compared to other adventures like this that we have been on this one was very tame. It was still a blast and the canyon was gorgeous. We started off the day by going down a little slide and then we took some time to do some cliff jumping.













Sixto told us that we were hiking in limestone canyons. Over time with a lot of pressure the limestone turns into marble. So we had white stone as well. When we got into the slot canyon we had one side of gray limestone and one side of white marble. The rocks were smooth and extremely slick. 









Hiking through the river was amazing. We had places where we all had to swim and even Ammon couldn't touch the bottom. We had a lot of slides and many options jumps along the route. 












The canyon got more narrow at this point and in some places it looked a lot like a cave with the way the rocks formed. It was absolutely beautiful through this part. Sixto said it is a national monument.








We had one little rappel on this trip. Lu was sad it wasn't more. We were all shocked at how short the rope was for this particular rappel. It really should have been longer, but we all made it down safely with no incidents.








At the end while everyone did their last cliff jump one of the men in our group got bit by a little snake. The snakes where we were are not venomous, thank goodness, but he did have 4 little puncture wounds in his finger. Thankfully he was okay.


At the end of our adventure we pulled ourselves out of the water and hiked back up to our cars. Hiking uphill in a wet suit is draining. It takes so much effort to move. While hiking we could see down into the canyon. It was packed with people. We are so glad we went early, we really didn't see many people when we went. Once back at the vans we took off all our gear. As we walked the rest of the distance to our car I felt like my legs were flying without the weight of the wetsuit.

We arrived back at the Air BnB, had some lunch, then headed out to the beach. The tide had brought in some nasty stuff and so we only stayed in the ocean for a short time before retreating to the pool. We played for several hours before I made the kids come in to get cleaned up.

Ammon and I went out for a date night tonight. We went to an Argentine steak house. It was delicious. It was also really nice to have some us time. After dinner we came back home and gathered on the couch with the kids to watch some of the olympics. We watched Katie Ledecky take 3rd in the 400 Freestyle. Then we watched the US women's waterpolo team destroy Greece. It was such a great day. Go USA!

Comments

  1. UnknownJuly 27, 2024 at 10:22 PM

    That looks like an adventure that I would have loved. Amazing and phenomenal.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Olivia CobianJuly 29, 2024 at 11:45 AM

    What a great post! I love your guide's name and the ritual he had you perform pre-adventure.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Happy 15th, Cormac

 My kids are fairly disgusted with me and the fact that I've missed a few weeks of blogging. It has been a very busy few weeks for us with lots going on. So I'll do my best to chronicle the comings and goings of these kids. On October 4th Cormac ran in the State Cross Country meet. He did really well. He placed 26th overall and his team took 3rd place. We are really proud of Cormac and all his hard work. The very next day Cormac had a double header for water polo. Azure also had a game. In the first game Cormac got put in goal for a while. He doesn't love playing goal, but as long as he is in the pool I don't think he minds too much what position he is playing. They lost their first game, but won the second. Azure's team lost, but they played well. Because we are water polo obsessed and 3 games in one day was not enough, and mostly because Cormac begged for a ride, we went and watched the High School boys state game. It was an awesome game. I snagged this picture of...
4 comments
Read more

Murdered by Pirates is Good

 I sincerely hope that this morning was our last early morning. It will all depend on what time our flights back home leave, but as far as touristing goes, we should have had our last early morning. We rose early in order to head to the dock. We had booked ourselves a boat tour that would take us along the coast so we could see the various caves that are plentiful in the Algarve. This is such a beautiful place. We donned our life jackets then went with the group to get on the boat. It was an interesting boat. Most of the seats you straddled like you would if sitting in a saddle. Since we were a group of 5 we had one of the only 2 rows. It was a tight squeeze and unfortunately we were in the back of all the others so the view was always full of people and their phones. Lucette was particularly sad that she didn't get to "ride a horse." We headed out of the port to the ocean. The towns along the ocean are all very picturesque. We even got to see a private castle. Our guide ...
4 comments
Read more

This Random Island

Cormac says that I always threaten with, “That’s going on the blog.” Which is true. When the kids are being obnoxious during pictures I will tell them I’m putting it on the blog.  Today we should have been in Boston, but due to Flight Fiasco 2024 TM we ended up on Madeira. Prior to this week we had never heard of Madeira. The other consequence of the aforementioned Fiasco TM was that we had a 6:00 am flight which meant we needed to get up at 3:00 am to make the flight in time. For the past 2 months Ammon and I frequently go to bed around 2:30 am. Trying to get myself to sleep early proved to be impossible. Especially when I felt a fair bit of worry about sleeping in and missing the flight. I ended up pulling an all-nighter, but we definitely did not miss our flight.  The kids popped out of bed pretty easily all things considered. We got packed up quickly and headed down our 5 flights of stairs trying very hard to be quiet. Our Uber was already waiting for us. The flight was ...
3 comments
Read more