Learning to Kayak, Day 1 of 4 – Roll over and play dead, or: I should probably get out of my kayak now

So they had us show up for Day 1 at the very reasonable hour of 10a. We spent the mid-morning and early afternoon learning how to abandon ship when it’s freak out time (aka you’ve managed to get yourself upside down – again), then when we had that part down, how to alert other people that it’s freak out time (against one’s greater sense of personal logic, this involves STAYING underwater and ATTACHED to your upside down vessel, then some series of banging on the side of your kayak and searching desperately for the nose of your T-rescuer), how to “FLICK!” your hips to right yourself once yove managed to grab on to the nose of your rescuer’s kayak, and then, eventually, dunking ourselves back underwater with paddle in hand and trying to right ourselves and eliminate all that muss and fuss.

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As you can imagine, we spent the greater portion of our day under the boat. Sometimes on purpose, most of the time because that was the best we could muster. I think I came away with ~4 successes out of 25 attempted rolls, Ray ~0 out of 4. On a flat lake. With the instructor standing there trying to help us finish it off. Perfect – sounds like we’re completely ready for Day 2: heading down the river and Grade 2 rapids!’

Learning to Kayak, Day 2 of 4 – Omg the water is moving, what do I do!??!

We definitely could have benefited from an additional day on the lake (or in a swimming pool, sucking our thumbs) before moving on to the put-in on the Seti river. But it should come as no surprise that in a country where a single 70-year-old man carries an ENTIRE RAFT down a 10-story cliff, you don’t do things the wussy way here. It didn’t help – or did help – that our two tourist counterparts, Nat from England and Lucas from the Netherlands, who were as inexperienced as us at kayaking were both surfers and so “used to being stuck under water for long periods of time”. Fabulous. Me and Ray, we’re desert rats. Water? Water, what’s that? I think I saw that once. Is that the stuff that falls from the sky one day a year and everyone in Phoenix suddenly freaks out and doesn’t know how to operate their moving vehicles rationally?

But the first day was pretty gentle. The water was great, the camp was beautiful, a white sand beach backed by the jungle, right on the water’s edge. It was the country’s biggest festival these few days (like Christmas big, maybe even bigger), and instead of being home with their families, our awesome guides were out there with us. But they made the best of it and after fixing us a fantastic meal, poured us some big Rum and Coke…and more Rum…drinks and sat by the campfire and chatted with us. Oddly, I swear sometimes it gets hotter here at night than it is during the day, so when it was crash time, Ray and I ended up sleeping outside under the stars out in FRONT of our tents. And spending LOTS of time chilling in the water.

Hey, somebody’s gotta do it!

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Learning to Kayak, Day 3 of 4 – G gets traumatized

Big…water…little…kayak. Skeered. Hominuh hominuh hominuh.’

Learning to Kayak, Day 4 of 4 – F this, I’m on the boat! I’m on the boat! I’m on the mutha-effin boat!

I did recover from my coronary sometime around the 2nd beer the night of the 3rd day, however I swore off kayaking for the rest of the time, since the guides were threatening “ok now we get to the FUN stuff!” and squealing with maniacal fits of glee. Given that these ARE, after all, members of the whitewater national team, to my already stressed out ticker, that means raft time.

Ray for his part, did stay in his little plastic friend for the whole day (though btw, he DID jump in the raft for the last part of the previous day, the part that had freaked me out), and was steered through the monstrous waves (no regrets on my part for being in the raft for them!) by our lead guide, Santosh – who had not quelled my already taxed anxieties when he did the same for me the previous day with his very enthusiastic, cool-as-a-cucumber “WHEEEEEE!!!!”s, but Ray says that he did have fun going down with Santosh holding his boat and wheee-ing all the way. More power to you, Ray. I feared for you from the raft. Mostly because Ray spent most of his time on flat water like this:

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But…all’s well that ends well, and as we all made it down in one piece (well, Ray down one contact), looking back now, it was one hell of a few days. We were really starting to bond with Nat and Lucas, and the chance to do a trip like this and learn something new in such a far-off, exotic, fabled land was definitely a bad-ass memory and life-experience. If we had the time, I’d totally do the whole thing all over again with this AWESOME company (www.paddlenepal.com – I’m just sayin…and no I wasn’t paid to say it, they really were fantastic paddlers and people).

Come along for a paddle and check out the album of our awesome Kayaking Clinic!