The plan was quite simple ... Right across the bridge over the Danube, near the village Beska there is a combination of ponds and bayous surrounded by thick forests.The idea was to visit Arkanj. At the beginning of one of the river bayous is the place called "The end of the World", bohemian tavern without electricity and water. This is a place that is often being referred as "forgotten in time" and it is also a place where you can taste a superb fish meals. People call it "heaven on earth." Tavern can be seen even from the motorway but it's access way is through the village Kovilj. You can not miss. Going through to the very end, when you reach the end of asphalt road, you are there. When you see on each pole nest with storks, know that you are on the right track. We come to the water and being already accustomed to inconvenience, we expect some problems to occur. And there you go, kind gentleman approached us and said that the bayou in front of us is forbidden for paddling, actually restricted use of private water vehicles...
I must admit that this formulation has not been unknown to us since we have already encountered it but when find yourself in the middle of nowhere it sounds a little bit odd. When we asked who restricted, we get an answer: the monastery. Monastery? But the monastery is located 5 kilometers away from here, what does the monastery have to do with this? Apparently, the whole land is owned by the monastery and the monastery forbid the use of any vessels except monastery's boats that you can rent on-site, for 500 dinars (5 euros). For a moment I thought there is an ecological reason for this restriction, but when I realized that it's economical, things slowly started to make sense. The man to whom we spoke was renting those boats and kindly advised us to go to another place to paddle. We asked him whether we can change anything if we go to the monastery and ask them for a blessing for paddling (and leave some charity) but the answer was negative. Ok, there is nothing we can do, we asked about another place that we saw earlier that day and got the same answer. Monastery doesn't allow. The man then explained to us that there is a pond near village Kovilj that is not under jurisdiction of the monastery and there we can take a paddle as long as we want. We said goodbye and set off back to Kovilj. For the miracle we have not paid the toll road even though we used road on the monastery property. We pass the monastery and in a minute we were at Slajz, place out of sight of the monastery, although it is only a kilometer away.
Slajz is a pond of total size around 1 kilometer. Channel is connected to Dunavac and Tikvara but in that part water level was so low that Dunavac and Tikvara were unaccessable. Slajz used to be lock for ships but today it is a place of leisure for Kovin citizens with the small beach and a few houses and small rafts. We took sandy beach entry and in a minute we were in the middle of the pond.
As the pond is small, active paddling did not last long. Basically, you need 10 minutes to fully paddle pond. What is interesting is that the pond is not circular but has a few channels through which you come to broader areas that are interesting to seep in. Today there was no one in that area. All the people were concentrated in the central and the widest part of the pond. You just have to watch out when going through the channels because they are narrow, and there are a lot of fishermen, so you can get stuck in fishing line.
Storks were constantly flying over us and we could watch them as they landed on the pond in specific way. Truly an interesting sight. Moreover, they were not timid- as we were coming close to them they would just slowly turn away and make a long step away from us. In the central part of the pond is almost no aquatic vegetation, but if you go little further you'll find lily pond with flowers and frogs which the sun their green pimpled bodies.
The pond was mostly occupied by fishermen and swimmers. Number of fishermen was slightly higher, probably because of weather. It was slightly cooler and cloudier day for this time of year.
We paddled Slajz a few times and went out. The coast is little bit dirty. It has a little bit of everything here, so I guess people leave it behind when they go to picnic. However, we found one part, clean enough to go out and take a break.
If you are looking for an active paddling Slajz is not the best solution, but if you are looking for a place where you can relax, swim and perhaps take a little paddling then this might be an interesting destination. If you are still in active variant, the Danube river in not far away, so you can find there some bayou, but take a good look is there any a monastery nearby.
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