Advertisement
Published: January 23rd 2010
Edit Blog Post
Today was a free day in Whistler. Cat and I choose to do the paddle excursion, as did most of the tour. So you think paddling is like relaxing, paddling down a nice wide river. NO. not the case.
We were driven to the water front. There was one man Kayaks but not enough for everyone so there was also 3 canoes used. Hmm.. What is worse, what is harder. Go alone or by ourselves. Which will capsize easier? Cat and I ended up in a two person Canoe! Go team!.
So anyway this is not slow paced paddle across a lake with wide open spaces. Sure, we start in a big lake to practice. Cat had the front so she was our speed and power and me at the back doing the steering. Hmm. Our coordination was not overly great... the speed and the power didn't quite match. However, we did learn how to go straight by my constant hard work of super fast steering left then right. We traveled straight enough though seemed to do at least double the work of anyone else.
At least we had a common goal. Don't capsize. We were both all
for that.
The actual course/river we go down is Very narrow, with trees, branches and reeds attacking us from all sides. Sharp turns everywhere and the water runs fast as it snow drain off. The water is FREEZING, not deep, not wide, but we were told if we capsize to get out as fast as we can due to the cold. Apparently it is quite common to capsize however our group all made it down without any one ended up man over board. Sit shot gun! I copped a lot of trees. We would be heading at them at full panic and I would steer cat out s the front would turn away but shed stop paddling waiting to crash and then due to no speed I would end up in the tree which she found hilarious. I did too despite the cuts and bruises i sustained as a result. We managed to go full pelt and overtake some people and despite our tree incidents a lot more people seemed to struggle and cop much more tree then us. Our most unfortunate incident was when Cat ended up on one side of a thick branch taking up half the
river and I ended up on the there side. To get out of that it involved me pulling myself and canoe sideways up the branch trying not to tip the canoe to much in the process.. Big success.
Cathryn had a blonde moment asking other people if there are crocodiles in the water. Then, um ahead was a branch or rock bobbin in the water and she was like oh shit. It was pretty funny though it really could have passed as a croc. If you were actually in croc infested water, paddling away in a North Australian river somewhere there's definite potential to sh*t yourself.
After that we had an afternoon of free time in Whistler. Cat and I went shopping. Saw a mounty on a horse.. Got picture with mounty on a horse!. Tick. Done. Taken off the list off things to do in Canada. Good thing too cause it was right up there.
As part of our shopping Cat and I thought 'hey lets buy alcohol" and that we did. We bought some aqua blue drink that you cannot get in oz. Let me tell you it was horrible. Back at our hotel room
we were both disgusted with our purchase. Short on time we made the decision to run back to the store and get some Breezers. Cutting time very fine to meet with the group for dinner we jumped in the lift, started to move and then bang... lift stops. We are stuck a good 5 to 10 mins and then were able to get out. Following that is was some real quick skulls and running to meet us with the Contiki Crew.
For dinner tonight we went to an Irish Pub. We had dinner at an Irish Pub and then headed to some nightclub. I was lucky enough to sit in gum so ended up with the shits, leaving early and going home to scrub my jeans in a drunk and pissed off state. Cat and the others has a pretty hectic night from what I heard.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.236s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 16; qc: 60; dbt: 0.0748s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb