Europe’s largest canyon, Verdon Gorge slices through a limestone plateau for 25km. It’s deepest point is 700m and it’s narrowest at a mere 8m, it’s not quite the Grand Canyon, but it’s a good runner up.

A scenic road leads around the canyon offering view points along the way. We passed the large Saint Croix Lake to our right as we headed uphill. The beginning was our favourite part of the gorge as it was wide enough to see along. A huge pointy rock raised out the side and the beautiful turquoise river peacefully meandered around its edge.

It was a very scenic drive, though I think summer would be much nicer when the sun rises high enough to light up the canyon. There were autumn coloured trees and lots of tight bends to negotiate along the way. Point Sublime offered a fantastic view of an extremely narrow canyon that split off in another direction.

We passed a small village with a man selling cheese in a little wooden cabinet. We did our usual ‘Bonjour, parlez-vous anglais?’ To which he replied ‘parlez-vois francais?’ Oh France you stubborn country! What a stupid question, it’s hardly like I speak fluent French and am merely curious about how bilingual you are! Anyway…he was selling goats cheese which varied from 1-14 days old, and shrunk in size as it got older. We opted for a 3 day old and 7 day. The former just tasted like cream cheese, but the later was delicious and had so much flavour, amazing the difference a few days can make.

The next day we drove to Colorado Provincal. The name kinda gives you an idea of what to expect, but it totally wowed us. I don’t know where it came from, but amongst the green trees, pastures, crops and hills were red rock formations. It was only on a small scale, but the colours were incredible; it was like Mother Nature had used the area as a canvas and painted a sunset.

We did a two hour walk and couldn’t put our cameras down. There were a few hoodoos, but not as many as we’d hoped. Instead there were huge mounds of red rocks, some resembling a mini Uluru Rock from
Australia. One area had bright ochre clay, it looked like the stuff an African tribe would smear onto their hair. We walked along sandy tracks and past huge curved walls of colour; it was as if a paint factory had exploded with terracotta dripping down the mustard-yellow walls.

In a region of quaint villages and endless lavender fields, a pocket of Colorado impressed us the most and reminded us of the amazing time we had in Utah.