I’ve heard about The Texas Water Safari, but didn’t realize quite what is involved:
The Texas Water Safari begins in San Marcos with a gunshot that sends 200 paddlers madly thrashing across a murky pond.
Multicolored boats, ranging from six-seated scull-like canoes to single-seat kayaks, barrel into each other, tipping and tossing their occupants into the water. The bigger boats slam into the smaller ones, driving them toward rusty pilings.
Once the paddlers traverse the pond, they jump into the mud and drag their boats through thick brush to portage a dam churning with whitewater. They twist ankles and skin knees as they carry their boats down an incline of sharp rocks to the mouth of the San Marcos River near the center of Texas.
And that is only the beginning of the 262-mile endurance test that takes most entrants two to three days to complete and has enough danger lurking along the way to give Indiana Jones nightmares.
Poisonous water moccasins fall from trees. Wasps and fire ants are constant threats, mosquitoes and mayflies swarm at night.
In fast water, logs turn into torpedoes and trees tumble like boulders. In high water, hanging limbs snatch water jugs and knock competitors unconscious.
Paddlers navigate rapids in the first half of the race and cope with the broiling heat of the Texas summer in the daytime, then fight off hypothermia at night.
There are 12 classes for boats entered in the race, but competitors can use any kind of craft, as long as it is human-powered. No sails or motors are allowed.
No wonder it is billed as the worldís toughest canoe race. [. . .]
Remarkably, no one has died in the raceís 44-year history.
But many have come close.
Read the entire article. Golf, anyone? ;^)
Argentina’s 
