Day 95 – Friday 23rd December 2005

I woke up and decided to have a shave for the first time since Los Angeles on day number 8 of the trip…..

After shaving we went for breakfast and set about finding a better hostel than the one we had hurriedly checked into the previous night. It didnt take too long – first stop we found Casa Elena right on the lake and only Q17 pppn. After moving all our things over we went for a swim in the lake from our private jetty.

For the afternoons entertainment we decided to hire kayaks and paddle across to the other side where there was a cliff jump into the water from 10-12m. Everything started out really well, we got a good deal on the kayaks and set out paddling across to San Marco. For the first 10 minutes of the supposed 40 minute trip I paddled along nicely, however the further from shore we got the choppier the water became.

I struggled to remain upright and balancing the boat becmae increasingly difficult. I eventually got sidswiped by a wave and my boat capsized. This wouldn’t have been a problem if the boat had the proper waterproof cover on it however my boat did not. Therefore when it tipped over it filled with water and I couldn’t empty it out without a lot of fuss and effort. This wouldn-t have been so much hassle in shallow water, but the lake is 300m deep in places and that kind of plays with your mind a bit as you are floating about 1000m from shore.

It took about ten minutes of pissing around to eventually be able to carry on paddling across the lake. This happened twice on the journey across and by the time we got there I was pretty tired. The actual cliff jump was pretty special, a fall of about 12m into the clear blue waters. I did it and thats all there is to that.

The paddle back was eventful. I set off and got about a third of the way across when I turned back and saw a few of the lads in trouble. The three of us who had made it that far turned back and to help. By the time we had got there they had been in the water for around 15 minutes and were getting cold. It was only about 500m off shore and having been reguarly swimming 5km a week before coming away I knew I could make it back without a fuss so I swapped my place in the kayak and swam for shore. I made sure that I had someone near me all the time as getting into trouble in the deep waters would have been bad news. After 10 minutes of swimming and hitching a lift on the back of kayaks I made it back to the shore and promptly began the long journey back across the lake for the third time.

Although I tried my hardest to switch my brain off and go into automatic paddling mode, the next hour wasn’t easy. I was glad when I made it back just before dusk, even more glad of a hot shower, and even more glad of a big dinner and some beers!