For the last couple of years, my brother tried to get me to try mountain kayaking, and finally, he succeeded! I was visiting family in Poland and decided to try it with him on the Dunajec river in Wietrznica (quite close to the Tatra mountains and Zakopane).
It was so much fun!!! After the course, I was dead tired, but I had so much fun!
I enrolled in a 3-day course organized by Rivent. On the first day, we learned how to kayak – you would be surprised how hard it was! I was spinning like crazy at the beginning! 😀 We covered some basics: like how to catapult out of it when it flips, how to row forward, backward, different techniques on how to turn, how to prevent from flipping, and how to go from one side of the river to the other without ending up far away down the stream.
Having trained all of that for a couple of hours, we were ready to go down the river. The next day we drove to Niedzica to start kayaking on the Dunajec river to Szczawnica. It was a stunning 14km long route at the foot of the Three Crown mountain (Trzy Korony).
Dunajec Gorge (Przełom Dunajca) is the biggest attraction of the region and is crazily beautiful! It was so exciting! For most of the part, the river is quite calm, but there were some places where it was quite thrilling, as the current was strong and bumpy. We even got a multi-kayak crash, where we could use our newly gained skills of catapulting 😀 Along the way, we did several exercises and learned a couple of new techniques. Overall it was a fantastic experience that drained my couch potato energy to 0 😀
I managed to visit the same place a year later, where instead of a kayak, we rented a raft and paddled down the stream, while my brother was kayaking beside me 🙂 This time I took my GoPro to take some snaps:)
The third day was supposed to be training at the obstacle course at the campground, but I had to skip it as I had 15 hours drive to Copenhagen and run out of time ;(
My brother decided it is a shame for me not to try the biggest fun of the course and dragged me to the track right after we came back from Dunajec George 😀 He showed me how to rotate an upside-down kayak with the help of another one. I sucked so much at it! Apparently, I don’t enjoy floating underwater in a kayak:D
After torturing me for a while by flipping me upside down, we decided to try kayaking down the track. In the beginning, I was scared stiff, but after trying, I found it super fun! So even though I was exhausted, I tried it a couple more times:D
Thanks, bro, for the great weekends; you’re amazing (even when you’re drowning me, I know you will save me)! <3
