Just had a long weekend of white water sports in Slovenia. This is where the Soca River is, an excellent mixture of grade 3-5 rapids for a range of activities. Since it's a glacial river, it's absolutely freezing which is a good reason not to fall in.
We had a kiwi guide - you can't get away from Antipodeans in Europe!
First-up was a session of night kayaking with an amazing view of the stars. A nice sedated introduction to the trip.
Next was a morning whitewater kayak session which brought back memories of the Avon Descent as we navigated a series of rapids. The more difficult grade 4-5 rapids were negotiated in a white water raft.
A canyoning session took a few hours and the highlight was abseiling a 30-metre high waterfall which finished with falling 10 metres off the end of the rope into the freezing rock pool below.
The scariest/most exciting part of the trip was "hydrospeeding". This is a combination of body-boarding and kayaking, with a modified body board and flippers. So basically people go down huge rapids head-first through large stoppers and attempting to avoid the whirlpools. We had a couple of guides in kayaks showing us the correct lines through the rapids. Our route was through deep canyon for a few hours and there was no exit routes so once we started we had to continue all the way through some very exciting rapids.
A few photos from the trip are in the elly.net.au gallery.
Slovenia has become more accessible after becoming more politically stable over the past few years and I can thoroughly recommend it. Almost as good as New Zealand!
elly.net.au
http://elly.net.au/article.php?story=20071217030659746