Archive for the ‘Africa’ Category
Our very good friends Si and Cheryl got married this weekend. I’ve shared some great kayaking adventures with Si around the world, ranging from last week’s Italy jaunt to a year taken out of work 2000-2001, in which we did a round-the-world Grand Tour lugging white water kayaks with us. I got married during the New Zealand leg of the RTW trip, although Si somehow failed to attend the ceremony. His lame excuse was that he was severely ill with Leptospirosis at the time, forcing H and I to drag bemused strangers off the street to legally witness the ceremony…
Si met Cheryl shortly after returning from that trip, and they’ve continued the worldwide paddling adventures over the past decade; we’ve been lucky enough to join them on a few. Congratulations to both of you from Heather and I, wishing you a long and happy life together! Thanks also for laying on such a great weekend for us all, it was a fantastic chance to catch up with old friends.
A few photos follow of the wedding, and also of earlier adventures on four or five different continents…
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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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