Kokemäenjoki ("Kokemäki River") is about 120 kilometers long river in southwestern Finland, flowing to the Gulf of Bothnia. A friend of mine, whom we will call A-J here, had got an idea to paddle the whole river with an indian canoe and asked if I wanted to join on this adventure. Sure thing!
The final destination was to reach Reposaari island at the Bothnian Sea making the whole journey about 130 kilometers long.
It took six amazing days of adventuring, and I will go through them day by day in this series of posts.
Canoeing the Kokemäki River - part 1/6
The Day of the Great Egret
13th of August | 2022
Everything is packed and I'm ready to first hit the road, and then the river. It was about 5 hours drive from my place to our starting point. The day was super hot, and the air conditioning in my car wasn't really functioning, so a warm-up before the first day's paddling exercise was guaranteed.
The starting point at Vammala, downstream from Tyrvää hydroelectric power station. The canoe is packed pretty full, A-J is a photographer and substantial amount of gear needed to be brought along only for that. The sun is shining and the river calmly awaits for us.
Even the very start of the journey was already wonderful. The sceneries were more diverse than expected, aquatic birds here and there, and even some decent currents. The river immediately felt like a river, which wasn't the case all the way because of the dams on the way affecting to the natural flowing of the water.
After the first 12 kilometers of canoeing we reached the town of Äetsä and its' hydroelectric power plant to pass by over land.
This first power plant passsing was the easiest one. The canoe a had little portable wheels that could be fixed in place for rolling the canoe along. We first tried it with the canoe packed in full but soon noticed that we still needed to carry our heaviest backpacks afoot. All in all, it was only few hundred meters of rolling the canoe on land to reach the swimming beach on the other side of the power plant.
We rested on the Äetsä swimming beach for a good while. A-J walked to get falafel meals from a little restaurant nearby. The weather remained super hot, and the Kokemäki River calmly awaited for us to regain our paddling strength.
After leaving the town of Äetsä we were headed towards the town of Huittinen some 8 kilometers away. On our way we were happy to see sheep and cows pasture by the riverside with unrestricted access to the water. We also saw a beaver dam, but didn't yet know that we were about to spot marks of beaver life by the river Kokemäki in so much greater numbers along the way.
We had seen several Grey Herons on our way. Then some bright white heron caught our eye and A-J immediately realized it was a Great Egret risen on its' wing in our near vicinity. Herons are something that I don't see often. For A-J they are more common sight. But neither of us had never seen a Great Egret before, for it's not very common bird in Finland. 
We observed and canoe-sneaked after the Great Egret for a while. It was very a cautious bird, but A-J managed to capture some of the magical moments with his camera.
Great Egret.
Photo (c): Antti-Jussi Rantala. https://www.instagram.com/anttijussirantala/
We had canoed about 20 kilometers on our first day. The sunset was approaching inevitably and after a little scouting for a place to camp the first night we found a nice swimming beach near the town of Huittinen. We decided to go ashore there and see if it fits for our needs.
And it did. There were decent trees for our hammocks, a table and bench, and in the morning we could refill our water supplies from the indoors bathroom tap. So we did set up our camp and enjoyed the calm the sunset provided. Tomorrow it would be a hot day again. Even hotter than today.
The beach was public. A few people came to swim. Some came to watch the moonlit night - which was indeed beautiful. In the dark of the night some youngsters drove around with loud mopeds, but by then we were happily in our hammocks dreaming of tomorrow's river adventures.
This was the first day. Stay tuned for the next post.
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