Day 5: A Hectic Day down a Lazy River (or two)

We started our day with a quick breakfast and then we were on our way! We arrived at Karczma Starożyn's establishment within an hour. Not only do they run a restaurant and inn, they also rent out kayaks to visitors. We hopped into their truck and drove down some back roads until we reached our drop off point to begin our kayaking adventure.

We had 2 kayaks: one for myself and Matt, the other for Ewa and Piotr. We were given some padded seats to make ourselves more comfortable during the journey. Matt and I had never done any kayaking before so we were true novices. I think we did fairly well despite our lack of experience. We probably wasted a great deal of energy by zig zagging down the river instead of taking a more direct line. Some of the challenges that we encountered included navigating around partially submerged trees and logs (we probably rammed a good number of them), getting stuck in the banks of the river numerous times, other faster and more experienced kayakers, having to paddle across a large open body of water, and portaging across 3 closed locks. 

At the third lock, we met a young man who was  travelling alone in a canoe, an American. We chatted briefly with him. It turns out he had just landed in Poland a few days ago and had planned to canoe and camp over a 4 day period. We told him where we were headed (back to Karczma Starożyn) to have our evening meal before returning to Warsaw. We then parted company and continued on our way.

We had another hour of paddling before we travelled through 2 working locks (yay! no more portaging!) before we concluded our journey. We were quite tired when we stepped out out of the kayaks for the final time today. It turns out we paddled around 20kms today. WOW. After dinner, we headed back to Warsaw. I think we will need to self-medicate later tonight. Ugh.

The amusing part: Piotr did not mention how far we would be paddling and we did not ask. 

Masurian region as seen from a kayak:

The one functioning set of locks we got to go through:

Update on Friday, July 9, 2010 at 6:45PM by Matt

For anyone who is interested, here are some details of the route we followed in the kayaks today:

• Our starting point was from the riverbank of the Czarna Hańcza river just south of a town called Dworczysko
• We followed the river southeast, near the town of Rygol and then turned west through the Mikaszewo lake
• Finally, we arrived at the entrance of the Paniewo lake, just east of Płaska.  This is where we finished up.