Left, right, left, right I yelled my commands from the front of the kayak. Yes I was feeling pretty in control, pretty professional until we started going in the wrong direction!

I have been kayaking only a few times in my life and all these times I have been by myself flying solo in a one man kayak.
At our resort in Thailand we had access to their water activities (I thought i’d share with you the view from our balcony, you can see the bay just past the beautiful pools). I wasn’t brave enough to humiliate myself with windsurfing, in fact of an afternoon we would watch the windsurfer wannabes from our balcony and laugh at them. Yes we are cruel. We decided to go for kayaking instead, unfortunately there was only a two person kayak available. Now my partner Mark is wonderful, he honestly is, but when it comes to adventure type situations I get a bit nervous. Whilst I usually sway to the side of cautiousness, Mark has an adventurous carefree nature. Now kayaking is not scary at all, I was not scared of kayaking, I just didn’t like the thought of mark being able to tip me out of the boat if he so wished!

With a firm warning to Mark not to tip us out we set off on our little adventure around the bay and coastline.  It was great to be exercising. Even though we were doing loads of walking and swimming we had also been doing a lot of laying around the pool sipping cocktails.

Once we got into a rhythm we were soaring through the water, it was beautiful scenery and we were able to explore the coastline and see how the locals lived.  I’m not sure why but I set myself a target, I saw a boat docked in across the bay a few hundred metres away and I said to mark to keep his paddle out of the water I wanted to get us there myself. Perhaps it was the lack of exercise I had been doing, or the thrill of wanting to accomplish something but I got a surge of ooomf and paddled hard. I thought I was doing quite well, then suddenly we were going quite fast, my goodness i’m good i thought and then i realised mark had stepped back in to help out. “Out! I’m doing this!” I yelled with determination. We got there, probably a bit slower than I first set out but we got there all the same.

I was pretty happy with the overall workout. My arms were burning, I could feel the muscles in my back doing their thing and was also conscious of my core at work. I did notice that you need a bit of flexibility, as Mark found the outstretched seated position quite uncomfortable.

We worked pretty well together besides the odd clunk of paddles and Mark getting bored as I set out on my solo paddling goal. I would definitely Kayak again, in fact i’m quite keen. Maybe solo kayaking next time so I can challenge Mark to a race. Yes we’re like that! ?