Yesterday when we got up we had some breakfast (cornflakes) then headed out kayaking. Slaven showed us what to do and I was steering the kayak. I was in with Shannon. She tended to nag me a lot at first which annoyed me but she calmed down after a while and I enjoyed it. I suppose we were both trying to get used to it so it wasn't a big deal. I also think that I was reasonably good at it considering I’ve never done anything like it before at all. We kayaked to the mouth of the Zrmanja River then relaxed there for a few hours. It was boiling hot so we just sat around then went in the water. Izzy had never learnt to swim but she was really brave and she even jumped in from quite a height so everybody was really proud of her. Sam was our team leader and he did a really good job. Some people were saying he didn’t but I thought he did. When we kayaked back I was with Oliver and it was much more relaxed than the journey there. Everybody decided they wanted to swap kayak partners which was fair enough but I felt that the pairings reflected the fact that I was the only girl in my year when I was left without a partner and so was Oliver. I didn’t mind though because I didn’t get nagged by him and we worked well as a team. When we got back we all had showers then packed up the tents and got on coaches to the new campsite at Starigrad. Once we got there, we put tents up and Lauren and Izzy made tea. We had pasta with dolmio sauce. I got a good night’s sleep last night which I was so thankful for. There was an incident with Margaret though. The campsite is full of ants so Joe said we shouldn’t leave any food out at all. With that in mind, Margaret decided to leave the cornflakes out so they got wasted. Ugh.
This morning we were really unorganised but I had watermelon for breakfast which is probably the best food I could have had. We had to dump the stuff we didn’t need and locked it in a room in the campsite reception. We filled our day sacks and put them inside the big sacks. We trekked about 5.5 miles and I really struggled. I’m pretty convinced that I had at least 5 panic attacks whilst trying to climb the first third and I was literally in tears and crying that I couldn’t do it for the most part of that. Margaret had to walk me up. I was also very dehydrated though which gave me breathing problems which is probably where the panicking came from and Margaret made me stop and drink a full litre of water before making me wet my head under a tap in the village at the entrance to the national park. She kept telling me a story about the tree we were standing underneath which began to really grate on me. Slaven came back to see if I was alright which I thought was nice of him but was probably also his job...
Jacob stuck with me for most of the way which really surprised me. He made me laugh during the last third of the journey and kept my spirits up so I owe him a lot. When we finally got to the mountain hut, everybody had already been there ages and they all clapped for us which was lovely of them and made me feel like I could finally relax and that people weren’t mad at me which I thought they might have been. We relaxed for a while and Catherine and Sam made tea. We had the same as last night to eat. Currently, I’m sitting at a big bench outside of the hut with Jacob, Izzy, Jemma, Lauren, Jasmine, Louis, Joe, Slaven and Miss Morris. This evening has been really good, people have just been chatting and we’ve acted like a proper team today which has been nice. My role today was safety which I didn’t think I did well at considering the circumstances but Margaret told me that by having to walk slowly, I was making others walk slowly which was a good safety aspect.
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