Posts

Showing posts from July, 2012

Fake camping?

Image
There can be little debate that a camp that doesn't involve tents or sleeping bags, dodgy toilets or cold showers is no camp real camp at all. Be that as it may, last week's camp we organised in Jajce had a lot of other ingredients that go into making a memorable summer experience: sunshine, swimming, sports and surprisingly good food. That everyone got to sleep in real beds, in respectable bungalows was, in my opinion, simply something of a bonus! The picture shows everyone but me - I was holding the camera. Just over thirty young people and youth leaders, representing six towns in Bosnia and Herzegovina. I was also responsible for putting together short highlight videos of each day's activities. These got played out as part of the evening programme. They're now hidden away on YouTube but if you'd like a glimpse into some of what we got up to you can find them by clicking on one of the following days: Tuesday , Wednesday or Thursday .  

Mine, not mine!

Image
This is this evening out by the lakes in Jajce. What you can see around the the top of the mountain in the middle of the photograph are not clouds but smoke from fires that have been burning up there for the past two weeks. We spent last week 'camping' out by the lakes: the inverted commas indicate that I understand staying in a bungalow doesn't equate to real camping; but neither I or any of the young people involved seemed to be complaining about that. Almost every day was cloudless but every day we saw smoke. A few days before our camp started I had read about similar fires on a mountain outside Sarajevo. The article said no one was able to attempt to put them out because the area still had so many landmines it was too dangerous. According to a guy working on the rental boats we went out on, no one has attempted to put out these fires because there is no agreement over who the land that is burning belongs to, so no one feels the need to take responsibility.

Pedal power on Plivsko jezero

Image
It only seems appropriate after our previous post to upload this video. This is proper pedalo action from Jajce's Plivsko jezero. Well, I say proper but I'm not sure whether a duck shaped pedalo can properly be described as proper. Nevertheless, it proved a worthy lake-going craft, even if it did list a little to port. We wondered if this was due to my superior weight advantage but we noticed every vessel out this evening was leaning one way or the other. Perhaps not then, but if it was then an hour's energetic pedalling will have done something to help in that department!

We like lakes

Image
In the last couple of weeks we've had a couple of great watery experiences. Together with the Novi Most team we went on a canoe safari on the Trebižat river, near Čapljina. Surviving three hours on the water in the hot and sun without getting burned was something of a triumph - it was up around 40C that day - and our canoe skill were almost impressive, up until the point we capsized! I took photos but they didn't do the scenery justice. Neither does this video . Instead here's a picture from our latest adventure. We have two friends visiting this week - the one who is less into being in photographs took this one for us! Last last we decided to spend an hour out on the lakes in Jajce in a rental boat. These boats have very quiet, battery powered motors that are very cool if the battery has enough power. Unfortunately for us, about twenty-five minutes out from our start point I began to suspect ours was not going to last the duration. A quick check around the boat reveale