Arenal Kayaks Tours on Lake Arenal, Costa Rica

When wind and water currents combine on the lake, kayaking starts to get a bit challenging.

Yesterday the rain actually stopped. Unofficial sources record 6.5" of rain in the first 5 days of 2008. The lake level has risen dramatically once again opening up many places to kayak into the jungle. We're still about 3m short of the lake level of 3 years ago but we're able to kayak back into some areas that have been high and dry for a long time.

Our friend, Don, went along with us on this outing. He was cashing in a "gift certificate" that we'd offered for his recent birthday. Was a last minute call and he had just returned from a bike ride but was willing to accompany us. Who wouldn't? It was the first sunny day in many so being outside on the lake is a perfect way to take advantage of it.

We put in at the nearest launch point and headed into a fairly stiff breeze. This is normally what we like to do when it's an out and back trip, paddle upwind for a while and then drift back on the current. Really, paddling into the wind isn't all that hard and with a moderate breeze like yesterday it's not all that noticeable. We've been in some pretty strong winds where if you stopped paddling, you'd be blowing backwards. But, yesterday's breeze wasn't like that at all and we had a pleasant time watching birds, exploring a recently discovered river, and soaking up some vitamin D.

You can see in the photo above and to the right that the water looks a little murky. We're way back into a cove where a river is feeding the lake. After a hard storm like we had the past several days, the water runs pretty muddy. Also, in the photo to the right, you see the young tree that was growing along the shore is now in the lake. And right in front of our kayaks, back in the deep grass somewhere, is the river spilling into the lake. We can hear it from here but the grass was too thick to navigate any deeper into the jungle.

So, back to the wind and water currents. On our return leg, with the wind behind us, there was also a fairly strong surface current. This makes for "surf-like" conditions and if you paddle a bit to get up to speed the surf will carry you along for the ride. A short ride but fun nonetheless. In our sit-on-top kayaks, this is a lot of fun but you have to paddle pretty steady to keep enough speed to catch the waves. In the Great Auk, the surfing part is a lot easier since keeping up to speed requires little effort. The problem is that it's really hard to track straight in following seas. Then throw in some crosswinds and the currents generated by them and maintaining anything like a steady course becomes a lot of work. That's the challenge. It's easy to end up sideways to the predominant wave direction and be in danger of capsizing. Well, not really all that dangerous but certainly not a time to be gazing at the scenery and not paying attention.

We all made it back to the launch point safely so it was another successful Arenal Kayaks Tour!