Kayaking

As I mentioned in my last post, last week was PBL week. PBL stands for "Project Based Learning" and is a week where we get to chose (more or less) an interesting project that we want to engage in. I was lucky enough to get my first choice, kayaking. This meant that I spent Saturday-Wednesday sleeping lot, reading a lot and writing a lot.

Thursday morning, we packed the kayaks, putting all our thermal underwear and other important objects in black plastic bags and pushing it into the kayaks, trying to make sure that no water would enter the bags and soak anything important.

My (almost) packed kayak

20 kilometers and 4.5 hours of paddling later, we reached one of the last pieces of land before the Atlantic Ocean. Unpacking, I found out that one of my black bags leaked - of course the one with my sleeping bag, but luckily the sleeping bag was only wet outside. 

Trying to try my wet clothes, towel and wetsuit

 The view, though, was great. We had a blue sky and saw both the end of the fjord and the ocean. Later at night, when the stars came out, we could see the Milky Way very clearly.

Our campsite

 Dinner Thursday night consisted of tomato soup with noodles and is probably one of the best meals I've ever had.

We picked chanterelle mushrooms and Pil and Moa cooked them for us... delicious!

 After dinner we made a bonfire and tried to remain somewhat warmed until we went to bed, quite early.

Friday we didn't get up until nine, and made porridge for breakfast. We took quite a long time getting ready for paddling and didn't actually get out into the water until around twelve. First, the water was completely calm and paddling in the sun was a breeze. As we got closer to the ocean, waves picked up, and soon I felt as if I was battling the water to stay out of it. No one actually fell in, though - we didn't even have any close calls! The hard paddling was worth it, as we reached a small channel between two islands in the ocean. Our leader/teacher called it "Norway's answer to Croatia" and apart from how cold it was, it really felt like that.

Low tide meant we could sit on the bottom

After taking a break on the island, we wanted to get back to mainland before the waves would get a chance to pick up and become even choppier. Therefore, we battled the waves once more and reached a location where we made lunch and relaxed for about two hours. Going to the lunch place, we saw both a mink and a seal.

Food!

At around five, we crossed the fjord to get to our campsite. Once again, it was quite choppy, and though the place where we camped didn't look far of (it's the piece of land furthest away on the picture) it seemed to take forever to reach, and was in reality about one and a half hour.

That night, we once again had delicious tomato soup with noodles, after which we sat outside in our sleeping bags, talked, ate chocolate and looked at the stars (once again incredible) and the moon. I almost fell asleep outside, despite the cold, and that night the tent felt a lot warmer than it had the previous night.

Saturday we started with packing everything up, as well as the tents. Then began the looong way back to school. The first five kilometers took about one and a half hour, since the current was against us, but the rest of the way the tide was coming in and we had some help instead. I didn't think we would make it, but about six hours after leaving the campsite we could finally see the school. I was about to give up, my arms were more exhausted than ever before, but the feeling of reaching land was amazing.

Overall, I'm very satisfied with my PBL week. I learned a lot, and while it was one of the most challenging things I've done, it was very rewarding and certainly something I will remember for a very long time.