Goodnight Fullmoon

fullmoon illuminated by caving lights inside the river cave.

I looked up at the wonderful stars over the Laotian skies, so many of these sparkling gems, very clearly shinning in the crisp, clear, and cold night. Then I looked down, around me, and everywhere is in complete, very black darkness. The only source of light shinning from the front of my kayak, where I had attached the caving lights as a headlamp to navigate down the river. I was alone on the Nam Hin Boun...

A day before, the guide had told us it was only a "5-8km" upstream to the Cave from our base. It turned out to be a 20km paddle upstream, which left us with little time to explore the 7km long Kong Lor river cave when we reached the entrace at 3pm.

Hours before, I had defied the team and went into the Kong Lor Cave alone, while they took a more prudent decision to grasp whatever daylight available to make it back to base. Nam Hin Boun is a river full of obstacles - rock gardens, fishing dams, shallows... - and they knew night paddling would be very tricky.

Minutes before, I had pumped out liters of water, the second time within 15 mintues. It was then that I realized Fullmoon probably had a bad leak somwhere on its hull.

Fullmoon was sinking.