Sharon takes her kaya to the water's edge.
Smorrebro in Nerja??
Today we arrived in Malaga and boarded a bus to take us to the beach for our kayak trip. We traveled an hour to the beautiful beach town of Nerja and found a little beach dotted with palm trees. It was a blue bird day, mild and sunny.
We got outfitted with life vests and paddles and then carried our kayaks down to the water's edge. After a brief lesson, we climbed into our 2-person kayak and started paddling out to sea. I was in front and as we pulled away from shore, I felt the boat tip and suddenly, we were both in the water. Damn! It was cold! I swam back to shore trying to catch my breath and kept getting knocked down by waves as I tried to walk out. I ended up doing a very undignified crawl on all fours to get out of the water.
Once out of the water, I quickly warmed up in the sun. Back into the boat to try again, but we could not get balanced. Apparently, these boats were not made to carry large Americans and anytime Bruce moved the boat became unbalanced and we tipped over. Back to shore once again, and they bouhgt a bigger kayak. Back into the new boat and iback nto the water, but we were still feeling very unbalalnced. Anytime Bruce moved, we wobbled precarioiusly.
The guide decided it would not be a good idea for us to go out. So, we missed out on the tour, but they felt very bad for us and bought us beer at the beach front cafe. We actually had a very nice time sitting in the sun and watching the water. We had a little stroll down the beach, and returned to our meeting point a couple hours later to find the tour was running late and many people were not back yet.
The weather had turned a bit - the sun was still out, but the wind was picking up and the water was becoming more choppy. Unfortunately, the wind was blowing in a westerly direction and the intrepid kayakers were paddling back into the wind. A couple the kayaks ended up turning over and could not get righted again. They were in the water for at least 20 minutes and had to get assistnce to get back to shore. 3 or 4 people were approaching serious hypothermia, so they called in the paramedics. One person was in the ambulance for a good hour, but finally released. Everyone was OK. So, we were actually quite happy we did not end up going out!
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