Monday, June 7, 2010

Fish speak and kyaks

Ok - we're still on the Bohuslan coast, and camping under the windmill. For our full day on the coast, we decided to rent a boat. We figured that we could check out the coastline, and also that Hugh wouldn't be left behind (he's on crutches due to an altercation with a car in Melbourne). The hunt for the boat turned into a bit of an epic, but we ended up seeing a bunch of the coast as a result.




Initially we tried asking around in Mollosund. This resulted in a helpful local putting introducing us to the owner of a rather substantial boat. We were pretty nervous about this turn of events, and in any case the owner said that he needed his boat that day. Possibly that was code for needing his boat again, but we weren't quibbling. Anyway, we ended up spending some time chatting with the locals, and saw a bunch of herring being dried in the traditional manner. Or possibly they were feeding the birds - one magpie in particular seemed to have a taste for the fish.

We then started a tour of the islands, under the guise of attempting to hire a boat. At almost every stop, we were either asked whether we actually wanted kyaks, then told that no-one had any boats. As we could clearly see boats (and more than one, at that) in the water, we pressed on. After about 3 hours, we finally found a man with a boat to hire. He promptly convinced us the boat was a poor idea, but that kyaks were 'not a problem', even if one of us had his knee in a brace. After a pretty random briefing (where the only problems appeared to be caused by German tourists), we were given a map and a route, and released into the wild like a group of freshly hatched ducklings.



The trip turned out to be great success. Our hire-man convinced us to kyak around the island of Flaton, which we managed after a lot of effort. None of us capsized, but we all wished that we'd packed a bit more food, or even some fresh water. But the scenery was amazing, it was a great way to get a feel for the islands and geography, and the kyaking was great fun. We all slept pretty well that night, and the windmill was once again quiet.

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