Paddling down the Drava River in Croatia ~ Međimurje //original photography & story//

Hi my dear Steemians!

Today I would like to share a journey I had a few weeks ago as it was really exciting!

I met a friend on the permaculture design course I attended a few months ago. She lives in Donja Dubrava, a small place in Međimurje County (the most south County of Republic of Croatia that borders with Hungary) through which this magnificent Drava River is flowing.

She invited me to an event where we would paddle down the Drava River and the money we gave for participation went to organizations that help disabled children and for the preservation of this Pearl of Nature called Drava.

I was so excited when I realized I can go and that everything is actually going to happen :) Scroll down to see the trip and feel free to play this, in my opinion, very soitable song.

Now, I've created a map so it will be much easier for me to explain where we were going. A map has a measure on it so you can get the feeling for the distance and the length of our trip.

The red dot is the starting point and the green one is the ending point. The gray dot is where the first picture of this post was taken, from this bridge below. That's where we parked our car. The bridge is all shaky, what an interesting feeling!

From there we were transported by a tractor-trailer to the starting point. This it the machinery I'm talking about hehe

There were quite a bunch of people participating in this. The newspapers say about 100 people.

And most of them were from that Međimurje County what I really liked as they have their own dialect that I really love and it makes me laugh :D When we were starting it was really cloudy.

We took off and started to paddle. This is our skipper, my friend who invited me :)

The trip was so exciting as there were constantly new situations on the River and we were always careful and on the lookout. On some parts, the River was so shallow that we needed to be extra careful or even climb down of our bout (with lucky number ''8'' :D) and bring it through the tricky part.

And the clouds followed us until they caught us and the rain started to fall...Luckily, we just got to the place where we planned to have a picnic and there were a lot of willows to sit under and hide from the rain. And the rain was so warm that I really didn't mind it at all. I felt like a Robinson or an Amazon girl as Nature and the River were so wild, so full of lessons.

Finally, a photo of me; enjoying the Rain and the Freedom. Enjoying the sand under my bare feet, absorbing it's warmth.

The Rain turned out to be a thunderstorm. When it passed us by the Sun started to shine, there were just a few those beautiful puffy white clouds on the sky; like a new day had begun :D We were done with eating and it was time to start moving again. I took the paddle this time and didn't leave it till the end. It was really quite an exercise. I enjoyed it a lot.

Unfortunately, I didn't take a photo of our next stop as it was really tricky as the current was strong because one little island (about 2 meters wide and 4 meters long) ''cut'' the River in half and in that way she was narrowed down. The stream is logically faster as the River bed got narrowed down. There the River made a sharp left turn.

We somehow parked our canoes on the end of that turn, on a right coast. The reason I didn't take any photos is that I was busy swimming and enjoying the River.

It was cold at first, but I used my AiKiDo knowledge and started doing that breathing technique I learned on our training. It warmed me up from inside out pretty quickly. Then the enjoying part began as I was entering the River on the most top part of the coast and just let the stream to take me to our canoe. Repeat, repeat, repeat! Weeeee :D Happyyyyyy :D

After that, we paddled to our finishing point where we carried our canoes upstairs. Not an easy task, I must admit, but we did it.

And a view from the final point of our trip.

Thank you Drava for purification and strongness! <3

I must tell you, I love water a lot and this trip created an unbreakable bond between me and the Drava River!

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For those who didn't know:

The Drava is a river in southern Central Europe. With a length of 749 kilometers (465 mi), it is the fourth longest tributary of the Danube. Its source is near the market town of Innichen (San Candido), in the Puster Valley of South Tyrol, Italy.

The river flows eastwards through East Tirol and Carinthia in Austria into the Styria region of Slovenia. It then turns southeast, passing through Croatia and forming most of the border between Croatia and Hungary, before it joins the Danube near Osijek.

In ancient times the river was known as Latin: Dravus, Sanskrit: dravati, "flow". source

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Thanks for reading/watching and sorry for the long post.

Yours,
oceansoul13