Can you believe that it's March already? Cause it is.
Anyway, from Feb 13th to 16th, about ten of us went west to Glenelg to fit in a few days of canoeing and camping out before Uni this year. Uni is well under way now and canoeing feels like ages ago, but since I finally got the photos (thanks Josh!) I'll have a go at blogging about it.
Four out of the ten who went; all smiles here, but as they found out later, smiles don't help you paddle.
The Bunk house where we stayed the first night. The people who hire out the canoes do a nice little deal where you can stay the first night in that bunk house for free. It was, to my surprise, actually a very nice place, with a pool table, foosball table and other fun things of that nature, like bunk beds.
Anna and Jen jumped for joy, but they got stuck!
We played some hacky sack before it got too dark until it actually got too dark. Hacky sacking is so old school ('04).
Cam drank a fair bit of Kyle's bourbon that night and as we all know with Drunk Cam he went on his little drunken-rampage and didn't let anyone sleep until about 4.00am. Here is a photo of the said bad, bad man jumping from bunk to bunk like a monkey.
The morning after we were taken down to the river via this very vehicle and were ready to paddle.
Cam and Kasun lowering the canoes into the river. I just thought I would describe what was going on, incase the photo didn't show that clearly enough.
We somehow began drifting down the river in our little two-men canoes. If you were a clever little cookie, which I am quite sure that you all are, you would have noticed that none of the canoes in the photo are actually going straight. It took us a little while to get used to the paddling, so at the start of the trip we were zig-zagging everywhere.
Jen-Kasun Anna-Josh I think it was joined up their canoes for a while.
This was only our first stop point, and we look so miserable already.
Josh seemed quite experienced with "stroking his paddle". Why that phrase is in quotation marks, we will never know.
N
obody minds a little drinks break.
Josh taking a swig from the bottle and posing for the camera resulting in me getting tangled up in tree branches on the side of the river.
Kyle's trangias came in quite handy. Some modifications had to be made to use those public-school trangias though, they were missing bits and pieces.
The Spartan having an early dinner at our first camp site.
The Spartan marking his territory at our first camp site.
Myself, marking mine.
Rather awkward group shot, in my opinion. At least it's interesting due to the fact that everyone has different expressions happening.
Alex commanding the smoke away. Apparently (according to the legends), when wind is blowing smoke in your direction you're supposed to point at the smoke and say "white rabbit", which will make the smoke go away. I tried this method a few times and results remain inconclusive. Scared yet? Actually the scariest thing of all was when Amanda kept on going on about how much she loved looking at fire with some crazy look on her face. Scared yet?
Before-Scull.
Post-Scull.
Photo of the star-gazing session on the first night. Cam and Kyle kept on pointing out at shooting stars that were happening like every 5 minutes, but I somehow managed to miss all of them.
Second day of canoeing, and we were paddling alot straighter, as per photo.
Believe it or Not; that is Cam's dancing facial expression Anna is pulling right there.
This is where we stopped off for lunch on the second day, and Cam actually looks like he wants to kill himself at that very moment. Infact Cam looked pretty miserable in every single photo from this trip. And if Josh's photos are anything to go by, he didn't paddle much either;
[Cam - miserable and not paddling]
Girls having their lunch.
This is my second favourite photo from the whole trip. Whoever took this photo managed to get everything just right somehow.
View from our second campsite. The scenery was much better than our first camp site, but I believe there were also a lot more bugs...?
Actually I better write this down before I forget, some of us went for a walk around the camp site, where we got a very scenic view of the river. We also ran into some cool wild animals like a wallaby, an echidna, and ofcourse 'The Animal'.
This "perfect U" in one of the fire logs sent Josh insane. He just could not believe how a U as perfect as this could just form on a log by pure chance. To me it was mildly amusing because the U looked like the one from Unreal Tournament. Huge. Nerd. Ah well, at least I don't have a video of myself saying "headshot, five adrenalin points!".
Some scenic shots around the campsite.
Now how funny is that.
We stopped off at this cave area which was not too far from our finish point, to arrange pick up and lunch. The people who ran the joint looked like the grumpiest people in the world.
End of Canoeing!
Q. What would my blog be without Kyle and Amanda photos?
A. A much better blog.
haha.
Josh's car had been sitting in the sun for ages so the steering wheel was extremely hot.
So that's that for canoeing. It was an uber tiring trip but certainly a very worthwhile one. Credit to Josh for organizing it in such a short notice. There were also a few camera-less moments that I should list before they all become distant memories and I forget, like
- The snake Kyle ran over on the way there.
- The Pub dinner, the owners, and the "No not there, THERE!, the table with ten seats!" "...There IS NO table with ten seats!".
- Jen's "YUM!"
- Anna's "Don't be such a drainer!" and Josh's "I'm not the drainer!, You...!".
And if you were wondering what my favourite photo of the trip was;
"YUMMMM!"
-xx-