The Last Village Before the End

This is what my host father termed the village we went through to get to the waters of the Mother River to go fishing.

It was Saturday afternoon, and my host parents said that we were going fishing, so I hopped in the car next to Adeele and off we went. I was expecting that we were going to fish in on of the lakes near Elva, but when we stopped and got snacks and dinneresque foods, I began to suspect we were going further away. We drove for a long while, not sure how long, and then turned onto a dirt road before passing through "the last village before the end". After that, the dirt road became increasingly bumpy, and soon we were bouncing up and down and Adeele was shrieking with laughter. We turned around and got out of the car to load up the boat with supplies and then my host father backed the trailer up the the water's edge, so we could push the boat into the water. After he parked the car, we all climbed into the boat and set off.

We stopped to fish just at the beginning of the small inlet we had entered from. My father caught a fish right off the bat and I learned we were at the delta of the Mother River, a place like the Florida Everglades. We couldn't catch any more fish there so we zoomed away, weaving through the river paths and passing a fishing kayaker.

We stopped again and tried our luck, but couldn't catch any, so we moved down a little ways. Here, my father caught another fish, both of them under a foot in length. Suddenly, I felt a tugging on my fishing line, and I realized that I had hooked a fish. It was about a foot and a half long and very strong. I got it close enough so we could start trying to net it, but it veered off under the grasses and shook itself free. Apparently, I had only hooked it by the lip and that had been too tentative a hold to bring in such a big fish.

We tried several other places and my father caught one other fish. I handed my rod off to my mother, because my arms started to ache.

Eventually, it was time to head back. We got out and brought the trailer down to the water and started to winch the boat onto it. However, we had forgotten to hold the rope, and the strap slipped off the boat and the boat fell back into the water and drifted away. My father had to run down the side of the river and hook the motor with a tree branch to get it back. Finally, we got the boat strapped onto the trailer and all of the stuff into the car and set off along the bumpy road.

 We stopped in the village and my father showed me where we had been on the map. It turns out that if we had continued down the river, we could have gotten to two other small lakes or eventually ended up in the large lake between Estonia and Russia.  My father also told me that the village used to have about a thousand people, but now it only has five families.

We got home at around nine thirty at night that night.

I learned how to say sun and fishing pole and I learned that rum flavored candy isn't my thing.