Sea Kayaking

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I finally went sea kayaking!! First of all, it's different than any kayak I've used before. I actually sat in the kayak, as opposed to just on top of it. Also, they were two-person kayaks and I'm only used to one. This was neat however, because they actually had pedals inside so we didn't have to just steer with our paddles, we got to use our feet as well. This made turing a lot easier!

There were 12 of us that went on this day trip to Maraetai beach. We had four instructors who demonstrated proper paddling techniques and certain paddle signals that they were going to use throughout the trip. I went in a kayak with a friend; she went in the front and I was in the back spot. Since I was in the back that meant I had control of the direction of our kayak. It took a little bit to get used to the pedals and how far to step on them, but after a few minutes it was pretty easy.

We went for about an hour or so until we took a break. During this time my arms got super sore as I'm not used to using those particular arm muscles. I also got a blister on my thumb from the paddle. No pain, no gain! Along the way we got to look at the scenery. It was gorgeous! Right when we started there were heaps of sailboats, which made me want to go sailing. We also saw a hilly coastline in the distance. The water itself was beautiful too. It was so clear. We took a lunch break on this little beach and then went back. It was a lot easier going back because we were going with the waves, so less work on our part was required. Once we got close to the shore we rafted up. This means we all lined up and held on to each others kayaks and made a "raft." Then we started switching seats with each other. So we basically detached ourselves from our kayaks, stood up, walked/crawled over the other kayaks, and sat in another persons kayak. I thought I was going to fall in when I did this. It was fun, but I definitely didn't have much balance (especially when the waves were coming). The person who I switched with had a very wet seat so when I sat down, I was immediately soaked from all the water! Good thing it wasn't cold out.

I would definitely recommend sea kayaking to anyone! It's a blast and they are pretty hard to tip. No one flipped in our group and we had a good amount of waves throughout our trip.

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