Die Frage
Was macht ihr eigentlich im Winter? wird uns immer wieder gestellt.
Kurz gesagt - Das kommt drauf an: Die einen reisen dem Sommer nach, um das ganze Jahr Paddeln zu können. Ferienhalber, oder zur Arbeit. Andere bleiben in der Gegend und gehen den Winter über einer anderen Arbeit nach. Und ein Paar sind auch jetzt mit der Kanuschule beschäftigt, mit Arbeiten wie Jahresabschluss, Saisonplanung, oder - Blog schreiben.
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| Kees van Kuipers |
Seit vielen Jahren verbringt Kees den hiesigen Winter in Südamerika, vorzugsweise Kolumbien. Von dort erreichen uns dann auch regelmässig enthusiastische Mails mit Texten wie dem folgenden.
My winter so far has been a very nice one. After I left Versam I first went back to Holland to eat some real french fries with real mayonaise. Ahhhhh, and catching up with friends and family as well. In the beginning of Novembre I jumped on a plane to Bogota, the capital of Colombia. I have spent the last many winters here so it was nice seeing old friends again.
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| was good to see so many boats on a trip down here |
And also to introduce friends from Belgium and Holland to the rivers of Colombia. They came over for three weeks, and actually my unofficial teachers into kayaking around 1997. It was a really nice trip visiting old rivers and going to some new places as well. The hard thing was that the rains in colombia over the past months have been the heaviest since more than 60 years. Landslides, roads washed away, rivers eating houses, lot´s of traffic accidents and ofcourse also very high levels on the rivers.
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| my first few metres in Colombia close to San Gil. super high waterlevel |
After my time with the Belgians it was time for me to head up to Medellin and catch a flight to Ecuador to Tena to see old friends, paddle some rivers and catch up with Maud. Here the rivers are pretty low which was nice for a change. And by the way, there are not too many places on the world with so many rivers close by and such nice and warm water in jungly places. Then is was time for a little holiday within the holiday and head to the beach for a week. We were lucky to run into Thomas and Norbert who run trips down here in the winter. We could borrow two playboats from them!!! Meanwhile back in Tena and I will go back to Colombia in a week when the buses start driving after new-years again...
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| Kayaking ecuadorian style, as all the kids here |
The plan in Colombia is to travel around the country along with an expidition they invited me to last year. The plan is to travel around 18 departments in 3 months time. There will be desert, rainforest, mountains, snow peaks in there! And the other guys all do some kind of outdoor sport as well, like mountainbiking, paragliding, climbing and such. We teach each other the sports on the way... Looking forward to it!!!
Kees
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| the rio Blanco, a new one to me close to Villavicencio on the Amazon side |
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| getting to the Rio Ariari where you walk in for an hour and half |
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| the upper Rio Blanco |
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| Blanco last time |
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| the Hollin, where i went down first time exactly 10 years ago. A treasure in the jungle |
Labels: team, Winter 2011
