Portugal – December 28, 2007
I have a feeling that the trip to Portugal is now officially an annual thing – on the calendar, as it were. Flying out on December 27 instead of heading to Kerry in the more traditional Irish kayaking style means that you get to spend New Year’s Eve in Portugal. Not bad at all. Unfortunately, Ryanair doesn’t fly to Porto, so the annual trip to Portugal (as it shall be known henceforth) begins in ‘nearby’ Madrid. Yes, the one in Spain. A swift phonecall upon arrival to Rabiço in Melgaço confirms that there is indeed no water up there, so we head north instead to possible water in the Basque country.
So the first item on the agenda was a six-hour drive to the beach at Bakio, or as Pete put it so bitterly, a six-hour drive to somewhere just beside a different Ryanair airport. He cheered up sufficiently after a night’s sleep in the Hotel Alisi in Burgos and after we gave him a swift lecture on the Mañana Mañana motto.
So, who was on the trip? Well, there was Jim, Kate, and Ferg:
Representing the Limerick massive was Andy:
and camera-shy Jac:
and Pete in his new boat, like a kid at Christmas (actually, he kind of is a kid and it was Christmas):
This time out, we were trying a new roofrack system – foam blocks and roofbars – since rental estate cars cannot be depended upon to have roofrails anymore. The new system works pretty well, but you need to ensure that when you drop the car back to Hertz, they have a short guy working that day. Luckily for us, the Madrid Hertz guy was limited in stature.
Ferg, happy as always…
The surf was scary – jacked up quite hard and gave you an exhilarating ride. Here’s Andy:
‘Just like Curragower’ he said.
…Curragower on a really big day.
We pretty much picked the town of Bakio randomly and none of the local surfers seemed to think the waves were anything out of the ordinary for late December. Bah.
Looked like a nice little town too…
Andy – all eyes on the camera…
Jim and Andy get better acquainted in the mush…
Pete gets some air in his new boat…
Pete loses his new boat upstream in the rip. Pete: good with computers, bad at getting off the water…
Meanwhile, the rest of our team was heading from Portugal to join us – Satu, Simon Westgarth, and Urpu.
And that was end of the first day. Creekboating in Portugal is hard.
