Kayak & chill

... literally.

Have you ever done three consecutive days of advanced kayak school? With some more kayaking and hiking in between? Now try adding a rock climbing session on the morning of your third day.

In summary, today was pretty intense. Of course, all of this was voluntary. I had even excluded the option of going climbing this morning, not only because the activity level these days had been twice as much as I'm used to already, but also because it was Julia's birthday and I wanted to spend time with her instead of going off to some rocks on the other side of the border. BUT for climbing I usually don't need a lot of convincing. So I booked a morning trip to Sasso Camet on the Italian side of the Predel pass, together with Renska, a Canadian-Dutch girl I had met at the hostel, and our guide Roli. We were actually colder than we would later be in the water, seeing as the rock was in a forest and every time we tried a route we would not feel our fingers anymore - not ideal for climbing. Thanks to Rolis daredevil driving we even made it back just in time for Renska's bus to Bled.
After a quick lunch, Julia and I went for our last kayak class (for now). Like the day before, we were joined by Boti and our guide Marci. These two hungarians, who work at one of our favorite outdoor company, have become our friends already on prior trips, so it has been a lot of fun to paddle with them. Marci even got us some special treatment today: we went the double of our usual distance! That is, we started one section further upstream then we had done on the prior days, on the level III/IV section Bunkerj (which was by far the hardest we had paddled so far; two days earlier Matej had predicted that we might do that section in about three years!). It starts with two really tricky rapids. Sadly I flipped on both, as my energy levels were so low that I did not even manage to empty my kayak by myself once I had swom out of the water. After a granola bar it became a little better though.

Since we had to carry our kayaks in between (some parts are just too dangerous if you don't know how to do the eskimo roll) we got to the lower entry point Vodenca at 6.30 p.m. Although after 6 p.m. you are supposed to leave the river at the first official exit, we still went on all the way to Čezsoča. After the last rapid, we opened our drinks and had a little birthday brindis to Julia - Soča style.Read more