Back in deep waters

July 29, 2014 - 14:13

Our start was washed away by the heavy rain on Monday, but on Tuesday morning we left the shore. Today, we will spend the night on the free beach of Dunaujvaros. The Duna 2860 continues.

To celebrate the restart of the kayak tour, we`ve decided to throw a little Vitez Kurtos gastro-picnic on Monday afternoon by the Kopaszi-gat. We`ve invited gastro-bloggers and journalists to the event, whom we introduced to the chimney cake baking and taught all the tricks to. Hosted by Csilla Tatar, the presenter of the breakfast show, Mokka, interviewed us on our plans for the journey. Then the kayak preparations continued.



The weather was lovely all afternoon, however just as we climbed in our “boat” came the torrential downpour. To escape the rain we ran under the roof and waited for a while. Upon checking the weather forecasts, the radar promised the shower wouldn`t go away for at least half an hour. As it was late already- and we would only be able to complete about 20 km of our tour, we agreed to reschedule our start for the next morning. Before heading home, we placed our kayak in safe hands, on the grill terrace of the Pelikan Gatorhaz Bufe.



By 8am on Tuesday we were ready to leave the safe harbours of the Kopaszi-gat. Until Mohacs, Gaspar is the wingman, cameraman, sundry-man and quartermaster, Attila and I will be rowing. We hopped in and began our “race”. It was cloudy and humid above the Danube, but was pleasantly warm. A few paddles only and we left the bay behind. As we`ve experienced before, the gurgle, the sound of every pull filled us with calmness. This could not be broken even by the sudden drizzles at times. We splash each other and ourselves anyway, so a little rain doesn`t bother us.



Even though in Hungary you don`t seem to find as many signs indicating the stream kilometre as you would in Germany and Austria, we still managed to guess our speed. Thinking of a 12 km/h average we hoped we`d get to Dunaujvaros by the afternoon, which was 61 km away.

After Ercsi we noticed something we`ve experienced in Austria. We heard the swash and saw how the rain is coming towards us from the south. When asking Attila about turning around and finding a safe shore away from the storm, we pondered the thought for a while, smiled and “raced” into the heavy rain. An interesting situation, I mentioned later, even though the rain could beat us, we still didn`t get soaked. But how could we get soaked if we were already drenched?



The rain caught up with us fast, but it quickly ended too. Once we managed to get through it, we landed our kayak for a little break after Adony. We spotted a few boats on shore, and we had a look at them. Few were being refurbished; some were perhaps used as dredge-boats, and some rusty old wrecks, one of which I took a closer look at.









In the same time we got news from Gaspar. He was waiting for us at Kulcs, therefore we got on board again and rowed all the way there. The town lies next to the Danube, so we could see many beautiful houses off-shore. Our wingman waited for us on the beach with the set camera. We stopped there for a few minutes, filled our water bottles and exchanged a few words. Just a few inches away from us a woman in a green dress, carrying a backpack passed by and waded into the water. We didn`t really pay much attention to this, but when we looked again, we could only see her head out of the water. It was a pleasant day, however the temperature of the Danube wasn`t ideal for a bath. The woman was swimming down the stream in her clothes and with her backpack.



We chatted for a little longer, then we made our way too. By then she was about 30-40 kilometres away from us, looking back at times, probably wondering why we are following her. Mostly because on the kayak watch we had the GoPro switched on and we wanted to record the day we`ve seen a woman dressed in green with a backpack swimming down the Danube, otherwise no one would believe the story. When passing her, Attila asked: `Are you swimming far? `. The lady with a strong Russian accent replied: `No understand Hungarian`. This explained one thing. The cold wasn`t a problem for her. But the rest? I pass on this.



A few hundred metres away we got caught in another storm, so most probably Tatjana did too. But as I mentioned before, as long as the weather stays warm, the rain doesn`t bother us. It was still drizzling when we spotted Dunaujvaros from a distance. We didn`t have to kayak all the way there, we were hoping to stay in the Szalki-szigeti camping for the night. Gaspar was waiting for us, this time to tell us the bad news: the camping was closed due to reconstruction works. However we could camp on the beach next to it. To get to the beach we had to row back about two hundred metres and come round a little island to paddle into the cosy, but little oozy channel. A gate also blocked our way a little further, which added and other “lob” to the Duna 2860 monitor.





A few people were sunbathing, a few swimming and a few sitting by the free beach of Dunaujvaros. We tied the rope, found our camping spot, washed our clothes and we waded into the lovely water as well.

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