Good, wholesome fun

Teams from five villages met on Friday night in Saint Jean de Sixt for the annual inter-village games (Les Gamineries des Aravis), but you might notice that there are six different coloured teams. A group of tourists makes up the sixth team, who were given tasks including the one pictured above, where they had to make a boat out of a cardboard box, then do laps of the ‘river’ (a blue carpet). The river included rapids (lumpy carpet) and a storm (a man with a garden hose).

I was lucky enough to get the grand stand view from my friends’ chalet overlooking the games, complete with a backdrop of St Jean de Sixt and the l’Etale peak of La Clusaz. Even though I was on the outskirts of the crowd, I felt like a local, with my yoga instructor getting on the mic for one of the games that involved contestants holding the ‘tree’ yoga position, and the winning contestant climbing the climbing wall (far left) to retrieve a note which said that in the zen world of yoga, everyone is a winner, and all the teams scored equal points.

Thônes won the competition, with Le Grand Bornand second, La Clusaz third, the tourists fourth and St Jean de Sixt equal last with Manigod. A hard rock cover band had already started before the announcer had finished thanking everyone for coming, and the crowd made a beeline for the bar. Sadly, the stage was not facing the bar, so the band were having some good, honest fun mostly by themselves.

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