Day 32: Go Kayaking

Kladovo to Brza Palanka (50km)

As the crow flies, the distance between todays start and end point was pitifully small. However, no matter how hard I wish it to be, spreading my wings and flying to my destination is not an option. I instead, was forced to follow the river as it took a sadistically long route from Kladovo to Brza Palanka. If this wasn’t frustrating enough, the entire day was spent battling winds from all directions, testing my kayaking skills, equipment and patience to the maximum.

I was on the river early, my aim was to get close to the second Djerdap dam, so that I could arrive at it early tomorrow morning. The river took a long winding route, the first 30km consisted of an almost 360 degree loop. On a nice day, this would’ve been frustrating, today, it was painful. The wind was strong, fluctuating from irritating to annoying to downright debilitating throughout the day. Doing a full loop meant that it was never coming from the same direction. I have found that full on head winds, despite decreasing speed the most, are not the worst. This honour goes to the side wind. With a head wind, speed decreases significantly, paddling becomes much harder and physically exhausting. However, because the wind is coming from directly in front of you, you are still able to paddle equally with both arms. A strong side wind not only slows you down considerably, but it also means that one arm tends to do most of the work, while the other is able to relax and enjoy the scenery. In my brief career as a kayaker, nothing irritates me more than a side wind.

During one of the aforementioned periods of side wind, I decided to take a break from the misery and have lunch. This turned out to be my worst lunch yet. The spot was quite nice and it was nice to escape the wind for a bit, but the meal that I prepared for myself proved to be almost vomit inducingly bad. I had tortilla wraps and cured ham, quite nice you might think. Wrong. The ham had been festering in the kayak for a couple of days and the flavours combined to make a meal that was very difficult to keep down. Whilst eating, I found a tiny plastic soldier. I remotivated myself with the thought that a little bit of wind was probably nothing compared to what this little guy had been through. I pocketed the miniature figure in the hope that he will continue to be a source of motivation when I need it most.

The rest of the day continued to be windy. Eventually, the wind got so strong and the waves so big that I decided it was time to bite the bullet and put on my spray deck. The spray deck is one of the pieces of equipment that the amazing guys at Go Kayaking provided for me. Up till this point it has been in the ‘useful’ section of my equipment list, used for nothing else other than to keep bugs out of the boat overnight. I had been reluctant to use the spray deck thus far, concerned about comfort while wearing it and also how easy it would be to escape if I was to capsize. My fears turned out to be nonsense, the spray deck was magnificent. It allowed me to conquer the waves without any fear of sinking. In fact, if I had worn the spray deck a couple of days ago, the day would’ve ended completely without incident. I powered the last 15km, actually enjoying being thrown around by the waves, the larger ones lifting the kayak up out of the water, before being hurtled back with a thud. The spray deck quickly elevating itself from the ‘useful’ to the ‘essential’ section, alongside the kayak and paddles (also provided by Go Kayaking).

I arrived into Brza Palanka in the early evening. My aim was to camp, but if there was a hotel in town, I would opt for that instead. There was a hotel, so I headed there to spend the last of my Serbian money. Shortly after the dam tomorrow, the Serbian side of the river becomes Bulgaria, so anything I didn’t spend on the hotel would go on tonight’s feast. The hotel was pretty basic, it didn’t even have a plug socket in the room, but it was just fine after another tough day in the kayak. Tomorrow I will pass the last dam/lock on the whole river and then there will be nothing and I mean nothing but clear water ahead of me, all the way to the Black Sea.