This is the first photograph ever taken by a teenage Berber cowherd girl who lives along the banks of the Oum Rbia River in Morocco’s Middle Atlas Mountains. I don’t think she did too badly for a beginner. She’s the tallest girl in the photo below.
With my teaching job’s generous salary and holiday, I am lucky enough to organise and take part in at least two overseas whitewater kayaking expeditions each year. Last week’s trip to Morocco was a relatively mild example, with rivers that weren’t too difficult and where many paddlers had been before us. In the last two years I’ve gone further afield to places like Bolivia, India, Costa Rica, and Quebec, involving fairly hair-raising paddling now and then, and even some previously unpaddled rivers. I’ve spent so much time paddling overseas in the past decade that I’m part of the BCU Expeditions Committee.
Morocco was a short trip, and is my only overseas WW expedition for this year. I’ve turned down kind offers to join WW paddling friends on the rivers of British Columbia, California and New Zealand, among other places. My explanation when refusing is that I am going to spend the summer paddling the south west coast of England in my sea kayak. They think that I am completely mad. What they don’t perhaps realise is that multi-day sea kayaking on home waters can be - against all logic - every bit as committing, challenging and rewarding as taking on exotic whitewater rivers.
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