13 June, 2007

Kanu tour around Arvika

5th of June till 12th of June:
We set of for our kanu-tour. We booked the kanu for a week, the whole tour is around 110km, so we should do 15km a day. But no worry, everything is planned so that you are not stressed. With all the equipment we have with us we are quite heavy loaded, but our instructor says we can load up to 400kg in the kanu. He also says, the kanu is quite stable, 3mm thick aluminium, unsikable - like Titanic - he adds. I am still not sure wheter that is a joke or not. Anyhow, we start the tour with great weather and water as calm as possible. Kanu is a typical team-sport so you are lost if you don't work together. At the beginning it takes some time to get used to each other but after a while everybody knows what to do. On a good day with calm water and no wind you can row about 3 to 4 km within an hour. So we really had enough time to enjoy the landscape around. Our whole tour leads through almost uncivilised nature and a national park. The water is clear and you can drink it from most of the lakes. There are so many lakes in the surroundings here, many of them connected or only a few kilometers from each other away. If you are interrested try searching "Arvika, Sweden" in for example Google-maps and you will see it. But back to earth, the landscapes consists mainly of forests, sometimes you have small cottages for weekends or holidays that can often only be reached by water. And also quite common are huge rounded stones with a very smooth surface (dt: glatt geschliffen) where you can sit, cook or just lie there in the sun and let you warm up. All the lakes have many, many small islands that are just waiting to be discovered. And we did. Some of the islands are so small that only one or two birds can sit on them, others are a few kilometers in length. So we were just looking for a nice place in the evening, preferable on one of the islands to put our tent on, surrounded by water with almost no noise around. And sunshine till 22.30h. One should not complain but on the last days I was almost happy to have a few clouds back. We have been using sun-protection with a factor of 20, but with 18h of sunsihne a day and on the water that was almost to weak. So we got a light sun-burn on the first days. For the whole week we had around 20 to 24°C during the day so we could sleep with open sleeping bags during the night. Sleeping with so much daylight around in the tent is quite confusing. You wake up at 03.00 and think you have to get up because it's so bright outside. And then I wake up in the middle of the night, it's bright outside. I am not sure wheter I have been sleeping 1 hour or 7 hours. The sun does not say a shit about it.The more straining part about the tour was not the kanuing itself but more the land transports. We looked for a tour where we would end up at the same place as we left. So we had to carry the kanu and our stuff from lake to lake where there was no natural connection or it was blocked by a power plant. So we did 8 land transports. It's acutally not that bad, but it takes some time. We got a small transporter that was basically a metal construction with two wheels on it where we could lift thekanu up. Then you just had to push hard enough until you reached the next lake. But since since we had enought time that was alright. The rowing itself was only hard on the two last days: high waves and strong winds from the front (the wind always comes from the front....) made us row twice as hard to be half as slow as normal. With a weather like that even 2km become really hard work. But we did it, reached our last island with a small light-house, surrounded by water, enjoying the evening sun, eating a good meal with desert made an awesome connection of Barilla, Knorr and Primus. Life as it should be more often.

4 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

I've only been canoeing a few times. It's a very Canadian thing, but I don't own a canoe :P Sounds like you guys had a blast.

13:22  
Blogger queenmob said...

i can only say: Im sssso jalous! You see so much nature. I realize more and more that I have dona a lot of traveling, but only in cities - im not really made for the nature :-) but I still want to see stuff like that one day!

09:44  
Blogger Felix said...

@Alex: If I will ever own an own Canu I will call it Alex, since it's such a Canadian thing ;). I can only recommend trying it again, it's a team-sport so maybe try it with Nina :)

@Mobby: You can just join us next time :)

13:52  
Blogger Nina said...

Hahaha... if I ever get a canoe, I wont call it Alex...
In a team with Alex? Pfff! ;)

God, Im really jealous of you two... such a romantic... land transport ;)
No, seriously, sounds amazing, I really want to do that (even if it has to be with Alex ;) ) or we do it Austria one day... we'll see :)

14:33  

Post a Comment

<< Home