As with baseball, basketball, volleyball and the rather bizarre game known as American football, the sport of “canyoning” originated in the United States, where it is known as ‘canyoneering’.\u00a0 Wikipedia defines it as :\u00a0 “travelling in canyons using a variety of techniques that may include other outdoor activities such as walking, scrambling, climbing, jumping, abseiling and\/or swimming.”<\/p>\n
What better way to spend a searingly hot Paleochora July day, with afternoon temperature nearing 40c,\u00a0 than following the River Kakodikianos from the old stone bridge at Mahia (described in ‘Explore’, July 2009) downstream through the Vlithias gorge (‘Explore’, January 2010).\u00a0 Having left a car with dry clothes in the village ‘platea’ at Vlithias, 7km north of Paleochora, we drove 4km up the valley to park in Mahia, then walked down to the river.<\/p>