Kayak Adventures

Saturday was Rotex activity number 1: A kayak trip with my fellow exchange students 20 km down the Lesse river. It was quite a day!

First, I had to get up at five to be at Jackson's house by 5:55. I had decided to go with Jackson (Texas), Mark (Arizona), and Laura (Colombia) because it's more fun than going by myself and if I went with them Mano wouldn't have to drive me to the train station at 6:30 am! So I walked to Jackson's house and then his dad drove the four of us to the train station in Marcienne-au-Pont around 6:20, our train was set to leave at 6:35. Let me just say that at this point it was still dark out and absolutely freezing and we were all standing outside waiting for the train, which turned out to be an hour late! Yes, it was getting light out by the time we actually got on the train and we were a little worried that we would miss our next train because of the delay, luckily we didn't :] The rest of our trip there was uneventful, thankfully.

When we finally arrived I was beginning to second guess my decision to go, first off kayaking isn't really my thing, I was there mostly to get to see the other students, and secondly the sky was a menacing gray, rainy kayaking anyone?? Also, I was definitely not prepared, I had a raincoat to wear and at the last minute I'd thrown a pair of leggings in my bag, and that's it. No change of clothes, no nothing! Fortunately one of the other girls had an extra pair of water-resistant pants that
she let me borrow and I managed to stretch my outfit into two so I would have a dry change of clothes at the end. Then another stroke of good luck, the clouds began to dissipate and the lovely sun shone through :] So with my awesome pants and the sun shining on my face I was starting to feel more optimistic about the day and Jackson and I set off in our kayak.

I was immediately grateful for the pants, even though it wasn't raining, it was cold and my paddles kept dripping on my legs, I would've been absolutely miserable in jeans! The first half of our journey was rather uneventful, for us anyways, Laura ended up flipping her kayak and when she did, for some reason she started to take off her clothes (not sure what the thought process behind that is) and ended up losing her shirt and socks in the river! Luckily some guys helped her out and gave her their extra clothes! As for us, we just kind of meandered along and ended up "joining" kayaks with some other guys and we just joked and laughed the whole way :] For lunch we stopped at a little like campground thing that had a little place selling frites and beverages, by the time we got there I felt like a Maggiecicle so you can only imagine my utter joy when I saw a someone drinking a steaming mug of hot chocolate! It was amazing! The only thing was that I wished the mug was like giant sized so I could just wrap my whole body around it, yes that's how cold I was. Then to make the hot chocolate even more amazing, in the lunch I'd packed I'd stuck in some little cookies that went perfectly with our hot coco :D

So after we'd gotten a bit warmer we headed out for the second half of the day. Unfortunately our luck didn't last, almost as soon as we were back on the river it started to rain, and I mean it was really raining, it was pouring buckets of freezing water on us! We started screaming and paddling as fast and hard as we could and tried to take shelter under some trees hanging over the river, though that didn't make much difference and we ended up just paddling through it and soon enough it cleared up. Apparently it was only raining over the part of the river we were on and just to give you an idea of exactly how soaked we were, when we caught up with the kayaks who were in front of us they'd thought we'd flipped our kayak!

After that it rained off and on for the rest of the trip but nothing near as intense as that first downpour. Though it was cold and wet the view the entire time totally made up for it! It was absolutely beautiful, about three quarters of the way through we even saw this old castle on a sort of bluff right above the river it was so cool! Unfortunately since I was gawking at the castle and our kayak was just floating down the river, I didn't notice the little "waterfall" until we were practically going over it!

Here are some pictures from the river:









By the time we finally got to the end I was drenched and my arms were starting to get tired. I was actually very proud of myself, I paddled the whole way while Jackson was the "rudder" aka sit in the back and do nothing, at one point he even said, "wow, you're really strong, I wouldn't want to get in a fight with you" that was a little awkward haha. So I grabbed a hot chocolate before catching the train home...by the time I actually got home it was 9:30, I was still slightly chilled and my arms were throbbing! Thank goodness my family had made soup for dinner :] Nothing tastes better than warm creamy potato soup after a long day in the cold! All in all I throughly enjoyed myself, and this blog really does no justice to my experience!