4 month holiday starting now!!! Austria & Swizterland

Now that I have finished working I have officially got 4 months off work that I can completly dedicate to travelling through Europe and kayaking in Uganda.

The first stop is South-Tirol, on the boarder of Austria and Italy...this area is phenominally beautiful and a winter paradise with some of the best skiing in Europe. Its also pretty crazy because the people don't consider themselves Italians or Germans...they speak their own language (Ladina) and have strong traditions and customs that are stricty abide to, to keep their Tirolian mana strong.

I stayed with my buddy Miu Miu for almost a week, walked everywhere possible around the area, ate great traditional Tirol food and got asked if I was a German way too often!!

The Oetz River were the comp was supposed to be held

Then it was off to the Adidas Sickline Kayaking Xtreme Race in Tirol, Austria which was promising to be an awesome event but mother nature decided against it and poured down with rain non stop so the race had to be cancelled due to high river flows. Such a shame cos it would have been real good but no worries, they kept the party going and that was a pretty mad night even without the race being held-Austrians and kayakers know how to party!!

Angi and Sophie the legends at the after-party!!!!

Randomly met up with some real cool Tirolians (Ben, Sophie and Angi) that I had met on the side of the canyon way back in Italy a month before hand. Then 1 hour later I was going rafting with them, then at their place drinking beers, then getting offered a rafting job for next summer, staying with them, then going to Switzerland the next day with Sophies friend Peter for the next 3 days!!!! I love these guys and I cant wait to come back to Tirol and hang out with them all next year!!!! Great people

Mountain biking in Switzerland, loving the colours of autumn and the great riding

Peter and Shifa at the get out of some section on the Inn River just out of the Swiss boarder.
(Shifa is a Swiss chocolate maker and fattened me up the whole week on the best chocs Ive ever tasted in my whole life!!!!!!)

Then it was back to Tirol to celebrate the girls successful Rafting Assessment, do more kayaking, celebrate Birgits birthday in Innsbruck.... and then go skiing the next day!!!!!

I love Tirol... theres not many places you can go boating one day, and snowboarding the next without having to travel very far. The Kaunertaler Glacier was real nice and they put up a great opening weekend!!! The field was nicely coated with some beauiful snow - especially for mid October!! It was an absolute bluebird day on the hill and me and Angi had a great time!!!!!! Im so excited about the Tirolian winter now, the only dumb part will be adjusting to the climate after the Uganda heat!!

Lago di Garda...the real Italain experience

Who would have guessed that Diego Depretto the crazy Italian guy who comes to Murch every summer, who sold me my first kayak in 2003... would end up employeeing me at his Canoyoning Company in Northern Italy 4 years later. Random story yes...but thats the best thing about travelling...the people, the places and the subsequent stories!!!

Me in my office, in the Valle de Ledro (Ledro Valley) working hard as usual

So 1 day after finishing work in Assisi I hightailed it up to Lake Garda and found myself with Diego and his extremely pregnant girlfriend Slyvia. They live in a beautiful place called Arco which is filled with some of the best sport climbing in world (Diego bolted 400m high routes decades ago which still are maintained by the council today), theres a huge mountain biking scene, a wicked lake which is world famous for windsurfing and sailing, walking tracks everywhere, top class via ferrata routes as well as only being 2 hours from the Austrian boarder which is overloaded with great skifields and rivers to paddle!!!!

View of Riva del Garda, Lago di Garda and Arco from Cima Capi (a famous Via Ferrata route)

The plan was for me, Slyvia and Mui Mui (my flattie - her real name is Alexia) to share 2 jobs while Slyvia got ready for 'MariSol' (their baby) to arrive. However MariSol popped out only 3 days after I arrived - 6 weeks premature and absolutely tiny as she weighed in at only 2.6kg. I got to see a 3hr old baby who was half the size of a 'normal' baby...yeap I got clucky as hell!!! Anyone who says that newborns are ugly abvioulsy haven't seen an Italian baby with blue eyes!!!!

Me and MariSol, showing off all the Canyoning Adventures merchandise

As it was high season and Slyvia was busy playing mumma me and Miu Miu worked hard non stop til the high season finished. I consequetiely worked 32 days in a row with only 2 1/2 days off. Pretty hard core as they were 12 hour days too...but not really...check out my typical day

7.30am Arrive at the 'magazina - Italian for workshop or office', make tea and pack the van

8am Pick up clients, drive 40mins to the Canyon

9.30am Give them all the equipment and send them on their merry way

10-11am SEISTA

11am Drive the shuttles to the middle or bottom of the canyon

11.30am SEISTA

12pm Pick up the clients, get all the equipment and drive back

1pm Have a BEAUTIFUL authentic Italian lunch made by Slyvia

1.30-2pm SEISTA

...then repeat the process for the afternoon tour

7pm Finish for the day then go home or out to dinner for another wicked Italian pasta or pizza, eat some gelato, drink some coffee then go to bed.....sswwwweeeeeeet!!

Me, Inz, Josh and Mel loving the Margaritta pizza!!! mmmm

This experience was great but it reminded me of the "Puteri Mahsuri' (the sailing ship I lived and worked on for 3 months in Malaysia last year, see older posts for details) because once again I was faced with crazily difficult communication barriers again.

While I was in Assisi I was with 40 kiwis so there was no pressure or urgency to learn Italian, but as soon as I got to Arco...I realsied pretty quickly that had drastically changed. All the Canyoning staff, clients and locals were Italians and the only time they spoke English was when they were talking to me.

So after 2 week in Arco, my Italian was 20 times better than 2 months in Assisi. Which was great but definitely not good enough. Classic times and great challenges which I absolutely loved, however it was so amazing when I started getting heaps of kiwi visiters so I could talk in English at a typical NZ pace.

Half of the 'Bakers dozen' - the team of 12 kiwis and 1 aussie who travelled together after Assisi...crazy!!!!!! They were my first contact with native English speakers since arriving in Arco...I was stoked!!!

When the work load started to slow down, and mates from Assisi same visiting I actually got to go playing in this beautiful outdoorsy paradise. Climbing, mountain biking, via ferrata-ing, running and day walk EXPEDITIONS (rather than outings) with ex-Army Laura Sutton were awesome!!!!

One of me and Laura Suttons nice Italian summery day walks...what th f**k?...snow???

Haha Josh will hate me for putting this on!! Showing off his buffness on demand

Stoked about the 30km downhill that we have to go from the top of Mt Tremalzo to Lake Garda waaaaaayyyyy down below!!!

About to superman through the dirt...my 3rd of 6 bails in the 1st half hour!!

Also when it got real quite at work Diego took me on a paddling trip in Germany and Austria which was real sweet. We found some great park-n-play waves as well as some nice G3+ (NZ Grade) to play around on as well. However we woke on our last morning in Austria to hear rain pelting down, to see white mountains all around us and fast, tree-filled brown rivers. Everything was flooded as so we had to retreat back to Italy dissillusioned with Austrian kayaking. Bummed but excited about coming back.

Eddie at Middle Oetz River

I finished work for Diego on the 1st of October absolutely stoked with my experiecne, and walked away with a handful of EURO cash in my hand, a return ticket to Uganda and camera filled with beautiful photos. If he had not given me this job I would have been back in NZ along time ago!!! He was so generous to me and I loved my stay in Arco... I will always remember Diegos generousity, Slyvias and Miu Mius cooking, MariSol, the Italian Stallion guides (Patrick, Demis and Paulo), the awesome climbing, wicked bike tracks, beautiful views everywhere, the great food and fantastic coffee.

More Assisi

2 months in Assisi, Italy was so sweeeeet. Beautiful weather, working with great people, eating fantastic gelato, drinking amazing coffee, hanging with 40 other kiwis, and of course just doing random missions everywhere possible!!!!

Hard at work... Me and Vaughn chillaxing while waiting for the students to arrive

I was working for a kiwi compny called Full On which was 'in the business of developing youth potential' and it ws real fun. We were NZers in Italy teaching American kids...abit stuffed up but super fun at the same time

Kees pretending to be dead for our emergency training

We would give them some real cool presentations about pushing their comfort zones, dealing with and overcoming their fears, dreaming about their ideal futures and living deliberatly the way that they want to achieve the most that they can out of life. Then we would chuck them off a castle with a few ropes attached for fun afterwards!!! It was cool and quite an inspiring place to work. Its hard to be negative when everyday your activing trying to inspire and motivate others!!!!!

My flatties...the bunker babes (our house underneath us)

We had some great missions over the 2 months there including trips to Rome, Sirolo beach just south of Ancona, various climbing spots, Perugia, Foligno, Piza and Cinqa Terra was a highlight for sure!!

Showing my mature side at the leaning tower

Excellent partying as well... with crazy nights like the cocktail party, the toga night and the rubix cube party was great as well!!!

Team Red getting amoungst it at the Rubix Cube party

The crazy Irish man Seanie wearing jessies shorts at about 5am one drunken night

It was a great stint there and I would definitely consider working there again!!!