Day 2
"In the depths of winter, I finally learnt that within me there lay an invincible summer."
Albert Camus
Woke at 6(i think). Getting adapted to the cold really quickly(or so i tot). Daringly walked out of my tent in just shorts and a shirt. Was the only person to do that, other than our aussie guides =) My cold resistance rocks man.
Anw, i forgot to mention that a few other aus ppl had came to join us on our paddling down Murray(pronounced Ma-Ree) river, while peter didn't come along. He had papers to mark, being head of the school. The people who joined us were Rob and Leia. So we had breakfast, bread with spread, and then got ready for paddling.
We're using one sided paddles, unlike the 2-sided ones we use for kayaking. and the canoes are also open -top ones, as u can see, unlike the close-top kayaks as well. It's 2 ppl to one canoe, so Meiting asked to pair up with me. We were taught a few basic skills for paddling(cuz it's slightly different frm kayaking), as well as how not to capsize if we hit smthing side-on, and took sometime getting used to the fact that the front person cannot steer much. The front person is just mindless horsepower and the back person(which was me) has to steer.
The scenery was so beautiful in the morning, with the clear blue sky cloudless and the trees standing tall by the riverbank. Looked just like one of those pictures u see in the calendar. lol. So after that we got back to dry land.And were then asked to go for a swim, to prepare for capsize drill. Rob said that if were alrdy wet, we'd be less likely to not want to capsize. lol. And damn it man, the water was totally freezing lah. Like ice water like that. I stepped in, shivered, and turned numb almost immediately. Drifted out witht the current, then swam back to shore. After that, watched the other grp humji frm the freezing water haha. They went in only a bit. Went to do capsize drill after that. Which was damn fei. Me and Meiting chose qte a bad place to capsize in, like some dirty place with weeds floating on them. And the moment i went into the water, all my body functions disappeared lah. like i just totally froze and forgot how to swim for a split moment. That was how cold the water was. Anyway, we then went back to shore and loaded our bags on. Cuz we were doing journey type canoeing, meaning we dun hav a base camp and we just keep moving down the river and kep finding new places to camp till we reach our destination. cool man. so if we capsize, our stuff will gg. haha.
Yup, that's my paddling partner Meiting. She's like the only girl i can find who's shorter than yt. haha. And so we started paddling down the Murray river, starting frm 1820km from adelaide, the place where yt went. lol. Brendan and the aussie ppl are damn pro and natural man. They just paddled down the river, looked out for and took any suitable place to stop and then they'll use it. They hav no fixed place in mind so it made our journey very flexible. pro man. unlike those kind of paid guided tours where they hav specific destinations.
Paddling down the river with trees on both sides was nice, damn nice. really beautiful. and u get to see a lot of birds overhead or water hens swimming in the water. and there're a lot of fallen trees by the sides of the rivers and they're dangerous cuz they can capsize u if u hit them. We made a random stop for lunch, and then paddled again till we stopped for dinner.
The first photo on top is our stop for lunch, and the second, our campsite for dinner. Nothing eventful, cept i learned how to do the j-stroke! It's a stroke where you can do one man paddling on just one side of the canoe and the boat wun turn , instead of going in circles. yay. and learned a bit of gossip abt meiting when our teachers, Ms Pang and Ms Lim paddled over. haha. They're the ones in the background of the photo of me and meiting. Anw, we went for a walk after dinner, when it was alrdy dark. Attempted to spot animals, witht the aid of Brendan's red light, which is less harmful to the animals' eyes compared to the white light we use. Found nothing though, so we went back to the campsite. And went to sleep. haha.
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