Nature-City

The last two weeks were outstanding exhausting! We had been 3 days canoeing in Algonquin Park – the best thing I have done yet in Canada. Miles away from civilization in the woods full of lakes we could enjoy the pure life, without disturbing cellphones, e-mails and iPods. And a week after I went to New York – a jungle too, but the total difference. A forest out of concrete skyscrapers and full of people looking very busy and important!

We didn’t know what to expect as we registered for the intermediate Algonquin Park weekend, because the beginner’s trip was booked out and anyways Meridith, our rafting trip leader, told us that we have to sign up for the intermediate trip to see more of the wonderful nature. And indeed she was telling the truth!

We had an awesome weekend, starting on Friday 5am and ending on Sunday 11pm where we really got to know a group experience in the nature of Canada. Starting from a canoe shop near highway 60  we tripped around the park for 3 days and 2 nights. All our equipment for camping (tents, tarts, sleeping bags, pans, pots, not to forget food) we carried in huge backpacks in the canoes, but if we had to portage, we had to carry both – the canoes and the backpacks! It was challenging but totally worth it, because with every stroke or step we literally got deeper into the wild, miles away from civilization, and closer to the nature!

A good teamwork was necessary to share the load between different portages, but also when putting up or down the camp for the night. The group experience was incredible! We shot thousands of pictures during this trip and last week we met at Phoenix’ and looked through the pictures and signed a piece of wood from the park with the trip name whittled into it.

New York

…was awesome too! But totally different. It is kind of another nature, full of concrete and busy people, running around like swarms of fish. We went there the weekend after Algonquin – so the contrast was enormous! We arrived on Thursday morning with an incredible sunset at Wall street (thanks to the taxi driver which was driving like insane to get us there!). The next days we spent on sightseeing and going out at night. Resumé: New York has lots of to offer for you, but you have to discover it and many things are buried under tons of tourist places – and I don’t think I saw one of this non-tourist places, but I am happy with the typical things like Rockefeller Center, Empire State Building, Statue of Liberty, Manhattan Skyline, Brooklyn Bridge, China Town, Times Square and so on…

A special place was the Central Park with the lakes in it. I could enjoy the dawn there on Sunday evening and it was a little bit perverse, because normally you enjoy the dawn in a city, town or whatever, looking to the sun going down behind some trees or fields, but here it was vice versa: Sitting in a park full of trees and lakes and seeing the sun going down behind some walls of concrete buildings and then even better the buildings started to turn on their lights!

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