The Biesbosch is a national park in the Netherlands, located about 30 minutes (drive) southeast of Rotterdam. On Sunday, Henk Jan and I hopped in the Beast (his 400k mile Volvo) and drove down to the Biesbosch for a day of kayaking. The Biesbosch is best explored by boat, since it consists of endless channels that weave around low-lying islands. The Biesbosch has a long history of inhabitants and water management. I'll tell you about that at the end of this post. We spent about 5 hours paddling through the channels, ending up with a solid 11-mile paddle for Henk Jan's first time in a kayak...

Water nerd alert! No kayaking in this post. 

One year after the deadly floods of 1953, which killed over 1,800 people, the Dutch began construction on the Delta Works - the largest flood protection system ever constructed. The "Delta Works" generally refers to 13 storm surge barriers (stormvloedkeringen) and dams (dammen) constructed between 1954 and 1997. 

In a previous post, I described the Maeslantkering, which was the final barrier completed. Yesterday, Henk Jan and I went on a roadtrip through the provinces of South Holland and Zeeland to visit 3 more structures: Haringvlietsluizen, Brouwersdam, and the Oosterscheldekering. Read on...

Last week Elizabeth (American roomie in the Netherlands), Sara (outdoorsy traveling buddy from Virginia), and I made an epic road trip across Croatia (known there as Hrvatska - hence the "HR" stickers on all the cars). We started in Zagreb, the capital city, and made our way towards the coast, stopping at Plitvice Lakes National Park (stay tuned) along the way. We managed to kayak twice - once near Dubrovnik and once near Split. Our first trip took us through an ancient city (and a UNESCO world heritage site) called Trogir, ~30 minutes west of Split. Click Read More to see a gallery of photos and write-up of our kayaking adventure through this historic city!

[I wrote this post back in January 2015, but I keep it updated each time I learn something new! I will add sailing terms soon!]

While I consider myself a fairly fluent Dutch (/Flemish) speaker, I was surprised at my limited kayaking vocabulary when I first joined the Windhappers kayaking club last September. It's hard to convince someone that you're a competent paddler when they ask you if you know how to do a boogslag (sweep stroke) and you return a blank stare. In the same vein, many of the otherwise-fluent English speakers did not recognize the English terms that I offered up in an effort to reach a mutual understanding. 

So, to shrink this gap in communication for myself and anyone else in the same boot, I put together this list of common kayaking and canoeing terms. A big thanks to Tim, Leon, Sytse, Eric, and Jan of the Windhappers for helping me translate the more challenging words. It's a work in progress. Please contact me if you find an error or have suggested additions. Click Read More to see the list of terms!