Galicia - Spain, November 2004

Matt and I traveled to Galicia from Nov 20 thru the 28th of 2004. Matt had just finished his internship at the raft company in WV and I had just finished my first 4 months in Afghanistan. We were joined by Mark "Sparky" McCabe an Airline Pilot that Matt had met in WV. The plan this time was to rent boats in Galicia. I had found a shop that had creek boats for rent in the city of Vigo. We decided on Galicia after reading an article in Kayak Sesion. Galicia is known for its amazing steep creeks and long season. The season is from November thru May. I had found a guidebook for the region that had good maps for put-ins and take-outs and gradient profiles of the rivers. The river descriptions unfortunately were in French and Spanish only.




Matt, Sparky and I met up in Madrid on Saturday the 20th, sorted out the rental car and drove the 4 hours to Vigo. We found what we thought was the shop, it was closed, and checked into a hotel across the street. Sunday morning we awoke and went down to the shop. It was still closed. It turns out that we are in the off season and shops are not open on Sundays. Further complicating things, it was a satellite shop and not the main shop where our boats were waiting. After spending most of Sunday figuring all of this out, we picked up our boats Monday morning. It turns out the shop wasn't a whitewater shop. It is a Windsurfing and Sea Kayak Shop. The owner had managed to scrounge up an abused Pyranha M3 and a Robson Charger that was in decent condition for us but did not have a boat for Sparky. He did know somebody who had a boat but we would have to drive an hour south to pick it up. This was all communicated through hand signals, pictograms and an English Spanish phrase book as we didn't speak Spanish and he didn't speak English.

The guy who had the boat was named Mito. Mito owned a rafting company on the Rio Mino the river that forms the northern border of Portugal. Mito is quite a character, among other things he is the keeper of the water levels for Galicia, and as it turns out we had just missed the water and were in the middle of an unseasonable dry spell. The only rivers with water were the Mino and the Larez. The Mino was a class II/III big wavetrain river that hosts an annual rodeo. The Larez had two sections that we paddled and was good fun upper yough style boulder gardens with a few more significant drops thrown in, including one 30' water fall that probably goes at higher water levels.

We paddled two days on the Larez and spent the rest of the time driving around, scouting other runs in the area and finding no water. The area has great potential for amazing creeking if you get the water level right and bring your own equipment. We were skunked on water but that is abnormal as Galicia usually gets a storm track off of the Atlantic similar to the Pac North West.

I had some troubles with the M3 I rented. It had been welded in several places and the welds failed on the first day and I ended up having to empty the boat after every rapid on the second and more difficult day on the Larez.

In the photo on the right Matt trys to communicate with an engineer on a riverside construction project who was attempting to warn us about something while we were scouting an adjacent rapid. We think that he was trying to tell us that they were blasting a new road tunnel and that it was not safe to be where we were on the river. The rest of the day we were expecting to see the river bank explode and to be showered in rocks but we made it to the end without any mishaps.

Besides Kayaking Galicia has great surfing and wind surfing, Mt Biking and road cycling. Travel costs are cheap camping is free and as the Kayak Season is during the regions off season Hotels are cheap as well. We stayed in 2,3, and 4 Star Hotels and never paid more than 20 euros per person per night.





Matt and I scouting rivers in northern Portugal. Because of the unseasonable dry conditions we did more sampling of the local wine than the local rivers.


Here is the Video Footage from Galicia, Spain

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