Fluid Kayaks - Team Blog

Having been absent from the White Nile since 2007 I decided, last minute, that a short northern flight to Uganda was overdue. Managing to entice my father and one of his friends, Hennie, by the notion of some lemon livin, we flew up for a week of high volume whitewater, warm wet weather and fishing.

After an uneventful flight, matched with a more eventful rush-hour drive through Kampala, we set our sights for the Hairy Lemon. The next morning, being one kayak short, we headed to the NRE camp to catch up with Jamie Simpson at kayakthenile.com. Additional kayak in hand, I then spend the rest of the day at the Nile Special wave with some Finish and American boaters. This afternoon at the wave also gave me the opportunity to test the pair of GoPro cameras I was lent for the trip. I tried a number of different mountings and played around with the different features.

Over the next few days we slowly found ourselves falling more into the Ugandan way of life with early, slow moving mornings waiting for the water level to rise. Then, we either tripped the river or headed up to the wave to surf. As fun as the wave is, running the river was just that much better! The lines are relatively simple and forgiving, while the high volume makes for a very intimidating paddle.

The completion of the Bujagali dam was very depressing. The realization that the more-fun rapids are gone for good was solidified by the wakeboarding which is taking place over the hump, widowmaker, bujagali falls. Nether-the-less the rest of the river presented itself as one of the leading kayaking spots in the world.

Having only a week there, I wasn’t able to get onto any of the bigger rapids except for Kalagala. We did, however, manage to have a look at Hypoxia. This has become one of the more impressive looking rapids I have ever seen with a final hole that is at least a story high. The line doesn’t look that tight, but even if you get it right you will most likely go VERY deep.

Due to the relaxed pace of the environment the week went very slowly and left us feeling very relaxed when we arrived back in South Africa. This trip, I hope, will serve as a warm-up for the Nile Festival in February. This event, according to Jamie, will be bigger, better and far more scary than the previous festivals.

This paddle brought back some memories of previous trips I’ve done up here. I remembered why I think the Nemesis is one of the best high volume playboats out there. This being said, I cant wait to get my hands on the new Fluid Dope and see how it handles on its soon-to-be, stomping ground.

Over the next few days I’ll try sift through the tons of Nile footage I gathered from a week up there and will hopefully have a short video up soon.

Craig

www.lifebywater.com