昨年夏、アメリカのNOC（ナンタハラ アウトドア センター）へ講習を受けに行った時のクラスメート、Premyslとは、その後もメールやFace bookでたまーに交流しています。
昨年末から新年にかけて、NOCのイントラAndrew、クラスメートだったTanyaと一緒に5日間、Everglades国立公園で漕いだそうです。ホワイトウォーターではありませんが。
そのレポートが、彼の母国チェコのカヤック雑誌に掲載されたそうで、記事と英語訳を送ってくれました。
Wilderness waterway is a 99 mile long marked water trail starting at the Flamingo station in the southern part of the Everglades National Park and ending in Everglades City in the northwest part of the park. The waterway is only accessible by road at the beginning and at the end. It is designated for paddlers and small motorboats. Along the waterway there are small campsites with limited capacity. They can be reserved only 24 hours before a trip. Some campsites are wooden platforms, called chickees, built over the water; others are built in the woods on the lakes and creeks banks. The most beautiful ones are on the beaches of the Gulf of Mexico. All sorts of birds can be seen on the waterway; dolphins, sharks and turtles in the sea, gators in the creeks, and if you ever leave something to eat out in the open, you can be sure that sooner or later a raccoon will show up and enjoy that food.
The idea of paddling the waterway caught my attention during my first visit to the Everglades National Park in autumn 2001, when I recently moved to Miami. However, it wasn’t until nine years later that I would make this idea happen. When I bought a new sea kayak in autumn 2010, I felt I had the right gear and decided to go for the trip. In October 2010, during a weekend spent whitewater kayaking in the Smoky Mountains of North Carolina, I presented the idea to my whitewater kayaking instructor Andrew K. and a paddling buddy Tanya C. They both liked the idea. Later on a friend and a fellow paddler from Miami Kayak Club, Leah H., joined our group. We all met at my house in south Miami on Dec 28, 2010 early in the morning. We put all camping gear, food and water for the whole trip into a Jeep Grand Cherokee, tied four kayaks on the roof racks and with this overloaded vehicle headed to Flamingo station in the Everglades. From there we started our trip the very same day before noon.
Leah and I had some prior experience of multiday kayaking trips in the Florida wilderness, so we knew what and how to pack. Andrew and Tanya learned this on the trip. They had both spent numerous days and nights in the wilderness, yet none of them had to pack a kayak for that purpose. Andrew had a lot of experience from whitewater kayaking and kayaking instructions, so paddling a sea kayak was a piece of cake for him. Tanya had spent only nine days of her life kayaking, yet she was the most enthusiastic member of our expedition.
I wanted to organize this trip as diverse as possible: I decided to paddle the first three days around southwest Florida coast and the next two days through the inner-coastal channels of the Wilderness Waterway. This way the whole trip was reduced from 99 to 85 miles. I planned fifteen to eighteen miles of paddling for each day so that we would reach our final destination in five days and would be able to paddle our daily distance even under unfavorable weather conditions.
On the first day we paddled fifteen miles in the Florida Bay all the way to the campsite, Middle Cape Sable. The wind blowing from north made only the last five miles of our trip difficult since we had to paddle towards the northwest. We landed at around five o’clock, built our camp, collected some driftwood for the campfire and watched such a spectacular sunset it was almost artificial-like. This was the coldest day of the entire trip; the temperature did not reach 70 degrees. At night it dropped to the high forties. Sitting at a campfire on a beach, drinking beer, eating salt pretzels with friends, and thinking that this was only the beginning of the trip was a really good feeling.
On the second day we woke up with the sunrise, cooked breakfast and slowly packed. By the time we started paddling at around ten o’clock, the temperature was already in the seventies. After a few miles paddling along sandy beaches the coast’s scenery changed into coastal mangrove forests with a lot of dead trees. Their trunks were completely peeled, whitened by the sun and rain and they gave the landscape an almost horror like quality. Some lazy flowing rivers and creeks meeting with the Gulf of Mexico added nice variety to the scenery. Our campsite for that day had a name that resonated with the character of the landscape: Graveyard Creek. After building our camp, eating dinner and collecting firewood, we had the opportunity to watch another spectacular sunset. When it got dark and we were sitting around the campfire engaged in philosophical discussions, strange noises from the woods near by caught our attention. Maybe ghosts? We pointed our flashlights at the direction the noises were coming from and to where we had left our boats. A pair of raccoon eyes in the dark reflected back to us. We sensed a problem: Tanya left one of her kayak hatches open. It was the hatch with the food. We ran immediately to the boat to assess the damage the raccoon caused on our food supplies. Only one bag of nuts was missing, which, although half empty, the raccoon left it some ten feet away from the boat while escaping. We closed the hatch and returned back to the campfire to continue our philosophical discussions.
The next morning I woke up before sunrise and sat down on a drifted piece of wood on the beach to watch the beauty of rising sun. A dolphin was cruising through the bay, probably looking for breakfast. The sunrise painted the sky with unbelievable colors. Then clouds came and hid the sun until the next day. We paddled the whole day along the coast heading northwest. The sand on the beaches was now softer and whiter. The water was clearer and if it wasn’t so cold, we might have taken bath. After crossing the bay at Lostman River we found a cozy campsite, Hog Key. There was a lot of driftwood, so we did not have to worry about our campfire that night. Thanks to the cloudy day, we enjoyed a warm evening and a pleasant night. We entered the second half of our trip.
The next morning was partly cloudy and windy. The beach was stripped down by the low tide and on the little islands created by the low ties there were walking raccoons looking for seafood breakfast. That day we had to paddle circa eight miles on Lostman River, which should bring us to the marked Wilderness Waterway. The next ten miles were through bays and creeks ending at our last campsite.
On south Florida coastal rivers it is not noticeable whether you paddle with or against the river flow. What you notice is if you paddle with or against the tide. I planned to paddle Lostman River with the rising tide to make it easier on us. Yet another force of nature turned against us and complicated our paddling: 10-15mph east wind in the wide river stretch created up to 3ft waves. We had to paddle really hard to get somewhere. At times, I felt as if I was paddling whitewater wave trains on the Austrian river Salza, especially when I was completely submerged by big waves from time to time. When the river narrowed down, waves were smaller and we just had to fight the wind. Finally we saw the Wilderness Waterway marking and paddled through relatively calm bays and creeks with mangrove forest on the banks, heading northwest. The water here was probably not that salty, because we could see alligators sunbathing on the creeks’ banks.
In the afternoon we were passing through Alligator Creek when Tanya, although veterinarian by profession, acknowledged phobic fear of reptiles. We had already seen three gators and that was enough for her. She did not want to see any more gators. I love crocodilians and was looking forward to seeing these lovely animals from a close distance. This brought us to close a bet on how many alligators we would see at the creek. Tanya’s bet was that if we saw three or more gators she would renounce on her beer that night and give it to me. My bet was that if we saw only one or two gators, I would tow her for the whole day tomorrow. It was rather cloudy, so the chances that gators would be sunbathing on the banks of a mile and a half long creek were not extremely high. At the end, we spotted four gators, so I won an extra can of beer for the New Year’s Eve.
Our next campsite, Darwin’s Place, was on a bank of a creek connecting Cannon Bay with Chevelier Bay. It took its name after the last person living there, who did not have anything in common with Charles Darwin, the author of evolution theory, except for the last name. Campfires were prohibited here, so we cooked dinner on gas stoves, turned on our head lights and spent the last few hours of the 2010 year playing cards.
Before the trip I made it clear to all participants that the slogan of this expedition is “Shut up and paddle”, and that they would hear this mantra from me anytime their behavior, attitude or comments were disruptive to the smooth course of the expedition. It was probably clear to everybody that I meant this joke seriously, because I never had to use it. Only this last evening Tanya made a careful remark that our fourth day of paddling was pretty difficult. I just laughed inside; as she made this remark at a moment I was not able to use “shut up and paddle” as an answer.
Few hours before the end of the year we stopped having fun playing cards. All our alcohol was gone. It was time to go to sleep. We realized that none of us had had such a nice New Year’s Eve in a long time.
A new year and a new decade started and only fifteen miles was dividing us from the end of our trip. Southeast winds were pushing us and helped us cross some large bays on our way. In a few hours we reached the campsite Lopez River, our last lunch break. From here the civilization was at a five mile distance. We paddled slowly, next to each other, through the wide stretch of a river bringing us to Chokoloskee Island, our final destination, connected through a road with Everglades City. I always pictured that after a week of paddling I would see this place and I would be happy I made it. The contrary was true. I felt sad this trip came to end. We landed on a small beach next to the road, called our shuttle, unpacked the boats and waited. The sun was reaching the horizon, slowly started hiding behind it, until it disappeared completely.
We spent five beautiful days in the South Florida wilderness, in the enjoyable company of friends. And we dedicated these five days to the activity we love: paddling.
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| 昨年NOCでのPremysl |
ワニがいますね…。日本やヨーロッパの川は安全でよかったです。たまにクマ出ますが。
Premyslはマイアミ在住なので、年に数回NOCで講習受ける くらいで、普段はシーカヤック 。わたしが毎週のように川でDRしているのを非常に羨ましがってます。最近は、3週間後に開催される ”North Carolina Challenge” というシーカヤックの100マイルレースに向けて特訓中だそうです。がんばれー！！
