Traveling the world with my kayak 2012

-Nils Dippon

2012 was one of the best kayaking years I've ever had.

It started with one month of excellent wild water in Mexico. We did most of the classic runs including Big Banana, Tomata 2, Aqua Azul, Silencio, Rio Jalasingo, Rio Oro and lots of other rivers around Veracruz. Mexico is a super cool place.  It's warm, clear water and lots of drops - perfect conditions for wild water kayakers.

We arrived back in Central Europe just ready for the snowmelt. Perfect water levels allowed us lots of good days in the cold alps, running rivers in Austria, Switzerland and Germany.

In August, I went to Norway for 3 weeks.
Lots of rivers, huge big water, steep drops, clear water.
Simply the best place to go kayaking in Europe. We were once again very lucky with water levels and we got to do all the classics.
Right now I have 10 days left of a 2.5 month trip in Peru.

We were here to do the first decent of the very upper Amazon - Mission accomplished!

The Amazon didn't offer as good white water as we expected, there were uncountable syphons.

Another success was the run of the Abysmo Canyon in only 9 hours, that is one of the hardest multi days in Peru by the way. We will use the rest of out time in Peru to do more first descents as the rain season has started.

All in all, I am a lucky guy to have spent such a great year!

Here are some videos of Norway, Oetz-valley and Mexico:
Nor(mal)way video         Oetz video         Mexico video

Thanks to Level Six for keeping me dry and warm and special thanks to all my friends who were on the river with me.
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Pics by: Basti Lexa, Ameli Lehner, Sepp Cetinkoeprulue and Flo Fischer.