Sweden Kayak Adventure

Starting off the round the world trip begins in Sweden, kayak camping on the Swedish coast of the Baltic Sea with 7 friends.

Thursday 21 August 2008, the morning after the Bavarian Beerhouse, we made our way to Stockholm, Sweden. Helena, of http://www.dothenorth.co.uk/ greeted us at the airport with a friendly smile and transported us to St Anna, about 200kms to the south. They had organized all of our gear and food and helped us load everything into our kayaks.


My new GPS gave me instant credibility and I was quickly elected Navigator despite having only just recently purchased it and barely acquainted myself with how it actually worked. Sitting in the front of Big Blue (one of four kayaks for our group of 8 people, the others being B1, B2, and Sir Steers-a-lot) I managed to, after a few wrong turns, get us going in the right direction. It seems that map reading, taking a compass bearing and open water archipelago navigation in general are skills that I don't use often and was a bit rusty to start off.


Ultimately we made our way out of the St Anna Bay and out into the great expanse of Swedish islands for 5 days, 4 nights of adventure. On the course of our trip we encountered the largest ant hill ever seen by man, the most dangerous island in the world that wasn't inhabited by wild animals but was slippery as hell and had all manner of insects especially the dreaded tick and one island that had none of those things but was perfect for everything else especially sunsets.

Having mastered navigation techniques, we set off to explore the archipelago passing by some stunningly rugged terrain with eagles and other sea birds soaring overhead. Even a day of rain didn't dampen our spirits, though it did make dinner preparation slightly unpleasant and even though the rain continued off and on through the night we had lots of firewood, marshmallows, wine and booze and keep the laughter flowing.

After the rain subsided the skies cleared and we saw two straight days of beautiful sunshine. As we had missed the last few days of the Olympics we decided to stage our own events. Well only one event really. We had have races out to a smaller island and back. According to the GPS one of the crews reached a top speed 7.8 mph! (Not mine though, we took the silver). The weather was also perfect for a bit of swimming and even though the water was cold and infested with jelly fish it was really refreshing after Olympic caliber paddling and, as it turns out, the jelly fish don't sting.
The final day saw us take a very leisurely paddle to our pickup point. We took our sweet time, stopped a lot to rest or "raft up" to float with the wind and enjoy one of the mysteriously left over beers, but more so to soak up the amazing atmosphere as much as possible before we made it back to the hectic streets of London, and, for some people at least, back to work.

It was an amazing camping trip. The sense of adventure and freedom that came from exploring a new part of the world really made it unique and was the perfect way to start of my round the world voyage.

Photos: Image 1: DG. Image 2: Old St Photography Image 3 : Old St. Photography. Image 4: DG/Garmin.

Last Day of Work!!!

August 20, 2008 5:02pm
Email from DG:

Cheers guys.

Today is my last day at UBS.

I'm leaving to take up beard growing full time. Also to travel the world and see interesting and exciting things unrelated to pnls and pivot tables.

Thanks to everyone for helping me make the long awaited transition from public accounting to not and for helping me settle into life in the UK the past 2 1/2 years. Stay in touch at dave.gerhard@gmail.com and follow the travels at www.davegerhard.com.

If you're keen for a drink, a few of us are heading to the Bavarian Beerhouse tonight from 6:00. I'm sure they'll make room as I'm a preferred customer. It's not Schnitzel Madness Monday but it's still great.

Take care.

Dave

Madagascar Entry Visa? Check.

If you ever want a pleasant experience getting a travel visa. Go to Madagsascar.

At first glance it would appear to be a major pain. Their website, www.madagascar.org.uk has no content other than the address phone number and email. No list of services, no downloadable forms, not even the office opening hours. Completely crap as websites go but it did have the email address I used it to ask them how to go about obtaining a travel visa.

They responded quickly though and within a day or two I received the instructions with the relevant forms attached. Strangely, though I noticed that the subject line read FW:RE:Madagascar Visa. Scrolling down I could see that rather than respond to my request, the representative at the embasy had taken a response to an email request from someone else a few weeks earlier and just forwarded it on to me. Sounds like something I would do! Although I like to think that I would at least sanitize the email so that you couldn't tell that on June 5th a woman named Helen B. at the University of West England (UWE) enquired about obtaining a teaching visa. She'll be in Madagascar in October. Apparently she used the same forms as me for her application. I wondered what kind of teaching she'd be doing. I tried google but only found that she works in finance and once won a kit kat egg with a mug at the UWE staff easter raffle. Sometimes the web isn't all that great a source of information. I'm sure it was delicious though. I imagine that, with no website, her Madagascar research must be top secret. However, now that I've stumbled across the visa application part of her plan I'm sure the rest will reveal itself soon enough. Or not. Either way it would be an amazing coincidence if our paths crossed somehow. Madacascar is more than twice the size of the UK so it's probably unlikely though.

This level of carelessness is a bit shocking for an international embassy but given the lack of sophistication of the website and the @yahoo.com web address I suppose it's fitting. Anyway I call it carelessness but I think, as I found in the Carribean, it is just a casual attitute, and more laidback approach to human interaction. It was this casual attitude I was surprised by and grateful for when I went to drop off my visa application.

According to their email, the opening hours are from 10:00 to 2:00. (See what I mean about being laidback). Since I'm on my last week of work it didn't really bother me to sleep in a bit later and take a quick trip over to Great Portland St tube to drop off my application for 10:00. Having been bitten once by the massive queue outside the Russian embassy when I last needed a travel visa in '07, I was well prepared to wiat. I had a fully charged ipod and my Lonely Planet guide to Madagascar which I've had for months and desparately need open since I have not yet planned even so much as a single night's accomodation.

Unexpectedly there was no sign out front or armed guards or flag flying or lineup down the street anything and if I didn't have the address I would have walked right by. Instead the Embassy of the Republic of Madagascar to the UK is a plain looking victorian building in W1 with an unmarked black door and a buzzer.

I rang the buzzer, opened the door and noticed that the inside was even more non-descript with plain white (or maybe offwhite or light beige I really wouldn't know the difference) walls and still no flag or brochures or photos of lemurs or anything else Madagascar-esque to me know I was in the right place. I was greeted immediately by a well dressed lady with a friendly smile instructing me to follow her to the waiting room and have a seat. Ahh, the waiting room eh? Good thing I brought my book and ipod!

Actually it looked more like a living room than a waiting room, with inviting high ceilings and comfy looking leather couches and chairs. At least I hoped the couches were comfy as I was sure I had a long wait ahead of me. Still no flags or propaganda of any kind. Way different from the Russian Embassy for example with cyrillic writing and portraits of Lenin everywhere you look.

To my surprise though, rather than kepping me waiting for 3 hrs, she sat down next to me on the couch and asked to see my application. She quickly checked that everything was in order and complete, asked a few routine questions took my fee and said the visa would be ready later on in the day. That was it. No lineup. No hasstle. No stress. I checked my phone 10:03. Now though, instead of sitting on a comfy couch for a while reading about Madagascar in what looked like someone else's very comfortable living room, I had to go to work. Thankfully, only a few more days of that.

Hopefully the rest of my trip goes as smoothly.