Kayaking in Rospuda

My original itinerary had included a couple days in the Masurian Lake District spent either kayaking, hiking, biking or simply soaking in this world renowned area. However, given the general shortage on time at my disposal I had started considering joining up on an organized weekend kayaking excursion. The problem was that all the starting points around the Mazury Lakes were incredibly difficult to get to by public transportation. Given this I opted for the next best thing: the Lakes in the Suwalki and Augustow Region and their interconnecting network of rivers.

In recent years the most famous of these has become the Rospuda Valley given to a massive uproar that erupted amongst nature lovers and environmentalists when the government decided to construct a highway through this fragile region. The end result was that the highway construction was stopped and plans are in the works of restarting it several (or several dozen) kilometers past the Rospuda Valley. Given the supposed beauty of this region I opted for a three day camping/kayaking excursion down the Rospuda River.

This entailed two nights spent in a tent (which I had to rent and which sets itself up. Yes, you heard me right, all I have to do is unzip the case for the tent and the tent pops open on its own fully erect with nothing left to do but to pin it into the ground. It is quite the ingenious contraption, but a little inconvenient to carry around.) The trip also included 30 km worth of paddling down the river and lake, a visit to a forest sauna and a couple camp fires.

The catch was that aside for the sleeping bag and the rented tent, I had no other camping gear. This meant that the nights were spent on the very hard and often quite cold floor and food had to comprise of sandwiches since I had no pots or pans to cook anything else. But this in no way affected the enjoyment level of the trip.

Our group ended up being 12 people including the guide. Everyone was paired off into kayaks with the exception of me and was forced to paddle all the way on my own while most girls relaxed and tanned while their partners did most of the work. (Maybe that’s a bit of an exaggeration, but a few breaks would have been nice). The first day was approximately 14 km down this little forest river with trees quite often encroaching on the river itself offering entertaining obstacles to avoid (or to plow directly into). The second day was primarily marshlands where for about 10 km the river snaked a tiny narrow path between fields of reeds. And when I say snaked, I truly mean it, as on this stretch there were exactly 100 very sharp turns. It concluded with the last few kilometers on a much wider river and then on the lake.

We had a fantastic group of people and ended up having an absolute blast, and although two days was a bit short, I truly don’t think my arms and shoulders could have taken any more.