Feedback of our Participants

In June 2024 we had the pleasure of welcoming Wesley and his mom on a mother-son-trip on our 9-day Whitewater Packrafting Training Alpenreise. They flew over all the way from the US to join our training and we had had a great time with the two of them, on the water and in camps. Right after their trip, Wesley's feedback reached us via Google:

"My Experience with Land-Water Adventures was better than words could describe. We flew from the USA to do a 9 day course in the German/Austrian Alps. You really feel that the guides work hard and we always felt taken care of. The landscape was amazing and beautiful. We shared meals and laughs as a group. On top of it all, with the structure and guidance from land water adventures. I saw significant progression in my pack-rafting skills! Exactly what I was looking to build with the added on bonus of great company that has created stories and experiences I will share and cherish for the rest of my life.!"

We welcomed Tim and his companion to one of the first day courses of the 2024 season at the Nahe (German only) at the beginning of May. We are very happy about his words, which reached us via our website after the tour:

"Spontaneous and eventful. We bought two packrafts for an upcoming vacation at the beginning of 2024. In May 2024, we wanted to spend a long weekend testing out the boats. While looking for a suitable river, we came across the Nahe and the Land-Water-Adventures website. We didn't think twice and spontaneously booked a day course on the Nahe 4 days before the course started. We attended the course with the aim of getting to know the boats and paddling techniques. The group was a good fit and the instructor was very friendly and open. We learned a lot about techniques, the packrafts and how to behave on the water. The knowledge imparted, the weather, the fun group and the instructor's passion for this sport made the day unforgettable and eventful. We left the course with good knowledge that we still need to consolidate and the confidence that we can manage our own adventure. We were also impressed by the variety of tours and expeditions on offer. This was not the last tour. We will certainly be seeing each other again! Thank you very much!"

Sabine has been part of the LWA community for a long time, has done many whitewater courses with us and came with us to Albania in summer 2023 for the whitewater tour on Vjosa and Osum. After her return, she emailed us a detailed feedback, which we were allowed to publish on the Land Water Blog: Albania 2023 - When the Osum turned to cocoa. Here is a short excerpt from her words:

"[...] impressed and overwhelmed by people and nature" - that's the short version of my feedback. If you have time, here is the detailed version 😀 [...]."

You can find all the feedback here, along with lots of impressions and a few anecdotes from the tour: Land Water Blog.

Ingolf has been with us on our courses, tours and expeditions for a very long time and has already been on most of our adventures. We are even more pleased that he is always there at the start of the season in the Hunsrück and left us the following feedback on Google in spring 2023, after our special Hunsrück anniversary tour:

"4 days in the Hunsrück with tent, sleeping bag and packraft on the road. A fantastic experience with a great troop and super organized by LWA."

We welcomed Kersten in the summer of 2023 for the first time on our whitewater packrafting course in the foothills of the Alps. She left us a nice review on Google, which we are happy to share here again:

"Packrafting on the Isar. It is the first time I tried something like this and it was unforgettably beautiful. Our two guides Sebastian and Andi took care of us devotedly. I learned a lot. Of course, not everything works out the first time. But the two of them never got tired of finding ways and tips so that we could acquire as many skills as possible in the short time of 4 days. I can absolutely recommend the two and the course. Fantastic scenery, a harmonious group, lots of variety and fun on the water. Thank you very much."

Robert has been on a few adventures with us, most recently for example the first run of the Packrafting Tour Albania 2022 and the Special Expedition Tour Norway 2023. On our Google profile he left us a very nice review in the summer of 2023, many thanks for that:

"Whether paddling in the whitewater of the alpine rivers, technique training in the whitewater canal or expedition tours inside or outside Germany - with LWA every one of my booked events has been a lot of fun. Everything is always very professionally organized and I always feel safe with the good-humored guides. The rental equipment at LWA is also of very good quality. Keep up the good work 👍"

We had the pleasure to welcome Julia, together with friends and family, for the first time in May 2023 at our packrafting experience day at the Nahe river. Subsequently, she left us a nice review on Google, which we were very happy about:

"In May we spent a great packrafting day together with Sebastian in the Nahe Valley.☀️ With a lot of fun and joy he teaches all the important basics and tricks that you need as a beginner to packrafting. You can tell that he leads these tours with heart and soul. The day on and around the water will remain in our memories for a long time. It was an unforgettable and great experience! We will definitely come again."

Dani, after her first experience in a packraft on the Hunsrück tour (see below) and on other of our courses and tours, joined us on the Special Expedition Tour Norway in the summer of 2023. "Special" because it was the anniversary tour Norway and exceptionally early in the year. On her Instagram profile, she posted a review with her impressions in words and pictures following our expedition tour:

Excerpt: "Neither pictures nor words can describe this wilderness tour with @landwateradventures in the Sylan Mountains in the end. 6 days self-sufficient on the road with packraft, tent and a team that I could not have imagined better 🙏😍."

Silke and Tobias tried Packrafting with us at the Nahe river for the first time, on this occasion their dog Sam was also allowed to try out what he thinks of watersport with his mistress. He liked it and so he came back with Silke for our course premiere "Multiday with dog" in November 2022. On this occasion the great photo of the two of them was taken. After our Christmas mail had reached the three, we got the following dear words by e-mail:

"Hello dear LWA team, thank you very much for the Christmas post. The calendar is a great thing and we are even a part of it. Really great. You can feel your enthusiasm in everything you do. That is just contagious. Great also the effort you have made in writing the personal cards. You are a great team. Have a good start into the new year and we are looking forward to Alpen 1 at the Isar. Best regards"

SSabine has been on the road with us in many places over the past years and dared to join the Expedition Iceland in the summer of 2022. On Facebook, after her return, she wrote a detailed and moving post about her experiences on our expedition:

An excerpt: "What a country! What impressions! Iceland is really a dream. My dream for four years. I am so grateful not to have gotten to know it with a bus trip, but to have experienced it by packraft and on foot. Anyone who has sunk into the coarse sand while hiking, felt the moss in all its colors, drunk the water from the springs and danced on the waves of the rivers with the packraft, anyone who has slept in the tent in the storm and rain, worrying when the right time to pee is, only to crawl out and bathe in the ice water, has absorbed this island. Like, really."

We had the pleasure to meet Didier in the late summer of 2021 on the Soča, where he first participated in the whitewater safety course WRT-REC (Link in German), and then rocked the waves of Soča and Koritnica with us in the Advanced Whitewater Packrafting course. Then, just before Christmas, the following words reached us via email, which we were very happy to receive:

"What a nice surprise arrived today by mail: Your beautiful card and calendar. How thoughtful and sweet of you. I still have very fond memories of the adventure on the Soča and like to think back to all the great and special people I met there. You guys have really built a very special packrafting community.
Wishing you and your loved ones all the best for Christmas and the New Year.
Warmest regards,
Didier"

Four of them came from far away and apparently came to stay. Dani from Berlin wrote us this mail after her first course with three friends at 4 days in the Hunsrück, which, you just can not say otherwise, put an almost embarrassed smile on our faces.

"Dear LWA Team! I just want to say thank you again! Thank you for an inspiring, damn funny, educational and all-around successful weekend in nature! What you have put together with LWA (and I'm not just referring to the weekend, but to the whole company) is simply unbeatable! Such wonderful people who are wholeheartedly involved and where you can just feel that everyone loves what they do and this enthusiasm is also 100% contagious! Whether it is the warm-hearted, fast and uncomplicated mail contact with Cora, the top-maintained, high-quality material, the cheese fondue ;) the fantastic locations and versatile tour offers, the individual, uncomplicated solutions to problems or the guides (of which I was allowed to get to know three wonderful specimens), who are there with so much knowledge and skill and huge heart, a lot of humor, patience and energy .... it's just right from front to back! And the feeling that Sebastian always conveys, to always feel and see how each individual but also the group as a whole is doing, what is wanted/needed and to always look for suitable solutions, that is really something very special! I now understand why at LWA the participants all seem to know each other :) I will be back! Keep it up! You are great! Greetings from Berlin, Dani(ela)"

And then when she got the calendar in the mail at Christmas, another email came right away:

"Uuuuuh! Thank you :) And biiiiiig thanks for the mail today which has put a big smile on our faces! The calendar has already got his place and I'm already looking forward to the two LWA adventures next year! It's so nice to be a part of this really special community! Thanks for you! Have a good rest and slide well into a new wild, colorful and healthy 2022!"

Andrea came all the way from the Arctic Circle to roam the Hunsrück with us and wrote us this nice feedback afterwards. And she says she is already looking forward to packrafting again next year.

"With this message I would like to thank you again for the beautiful days, your energy and enthusiasm for packrafting and a great experience that I will remember for a long time. Lea and I still laughed heartily afterwards and were very happy about the many photos you sent us."

Christian is a long-time LWA participant and was at the premiere of our Packraft Technique Training in the whitewaterchannel of Holibu in early summer 2021. After the course he wrote us the following feedback by e-mail:

"As always, the course was a super successful thing. I have already visited the one or other course with you and have never been disappointed so far. The course was clear and structured and has given me the opportunity to adjust and improve my paddling technique, as well as to test strong pulling eddys It was as always a feast for me to have been there, certainly not for the last time."

"Thank you very much for the Christmas wishes and the great calendar, which really makes you want more! Many thanks also to Cora for forwarding the photos and the newspaper report from our trial course on the Nahe. The day with Johannes was a real bright spot last year. We remember it with pleasure and are so impressed that we have ordered our own boats.

Ina and Matthias from Frankfurt"

We ourselves are rarely at the LWA headquarters in southwestern Germany, but we are always happy when people from close by join us in search of adventure. This family group from Neustadt wrote us an e-mail after their day at the Nahe (Link in German).

"Hello dear Land Water Adventures Team,

The wonderful weekend at the Nahe is over, the everyday life has us again. I would like to give a short feedback.
For all of us it was the first experience with Packrafting and it will certainly not be the last. The day on the Nahe River has completely inspired all of us, especially since the weather was perfect. The landscape is paradisiacal, also the camping site is a real gem, and that just an hour's drive away from us.
The organization was perfect. Susanne was a great guide, thanks to her patience and expertise everything worked out wonderfully and we had an incredible amount of fun. The mixture of technique training and pleasure paddling was great. It was great that we were also able to ride the track below the campsite. Great also the many information about nature and wildlife. Once again many thanks, dear Susanne!
We very much hope that you and your company get through this difficult Corona year reasonably well and that you can continue to bring these exciting things to many people.

Best wishes, see you soon again!
A colourful family group from Neustadt"

Our spring 2020 was significantly different than planned and we will feel the waves sent by the pandemic and LWA containment measures for a long time to come. We are very grateful for all the messages that reached us during this time and still do, and would like to share the following e-mail from Throsten and Yvonne here, which reached us without any specific occasion:

"Dear Sebastian, dear LWA team,

We would like to use these turbulent times to say thank you and to give you a little courage. Thank you for the cool weekend at the Hunsrück Compact Course for beginners, where you, Sebastian, introduced us to the fascination of packrafting despite the rather modest weather and the cancellation of some participants due to illness.😊 We were immediately so fixated that we booked the beginner course for whitewater novices in Tirol in June.
You made your passion into your job. And that is exactly what you convey on your tours. The world needs people like you, who live your passion, inspire and take with you people. For packrafting, for the time spent together outside. And that is what these difficult times are all about: Not to bury your head in the sand despite adverse circumstances. Keep fighting and persevere, not only for your job and LWA, but for your dream, your mission and the ever-growing Packrafting fan base! Especially in this tense situation: The Packrafting community needs you, your knowledge, your tours and the hours spent together with and around the paddle!
There is a time for everything. The LWA clock, however, is still at the beginning. We are looking forward to hopefully many more years with you!
Happy Easter, all of you. 😊

Many greetings
Yvonne & Thorsten"

Joachim has got to know Packrafting at close range, has ridden with us through the waves of Tyrol and through the lava fields of Iceland and was now 2019 with us in the Scandinavian wilderness. Under the blog contribution of the course he left us the following comment:

"Another unforgettable tour with our always-good mood guide Sebastian and the white water queen Susanne! Best prepared by LWA, we were allowed to roam the beautiful landscape of the Sylan Mountains for one week. We had everything on this tour, rainy days, sunburn weather, mountains, rivers, suspension bridge, blueest sky, mosquitoes of the nasty kind, campfire, in short a perfect adventure and a blessing for all who were allowed to be there."

This is Frank. Frank was with us for the first time in spring 2018 in the Hunsrück. And because he had read so much about the chocolate love of the LWA team on our channels in advance, he brought a whole box of it with him to the tour start. We were impressed! :-)

After the tour Frank replied to us with a wink of the eye:

"An old saying goes: 'If you can't impress people with performance, impress them with chocolate' ;-) I have to thank you for the great tour, it was really an experience! Since I was able to cope with the weight of the luggage much better than I feared, I now also plan to take the next step next year and go on the Norway tour with you."

In the autumn of the same year Frank and his wife joined us at river Soca together. And now that they have expanded their own Packraft fleet, Frank stands true to his announcement and will join us for the expedition training in Norway and Sweden 2019.

They were already enthusiastic outdoor enthusiasts, they became enthusiastic packrafters on the Nahe (Link in German), then immediately in the Hunsrück and in the coming season we meet again in Tyrol and at the Soca. But since the courses Mareike and Jens are also on their own fist with their own Packrafts. They wrote about their trip to the west of Canada in the Land Water Blog, you can find their contribution here: https://www.land-water-blog.de/de/kanada-hike-in-raft-out/ (Link in German)

Shortly before the end of their trip they sent us this mail directly from Canada - "carelessly" ;-) - because we immediately wrote back if they don't want to tell us about it in the blog. They did! Thanks for that and for those nice words:

"Hello Sebastian! A year ago we sat in a Packraft for the first time and were immediately addicted! Thanks to your training we neither capsized nor sank in Canada ;-) Instead we are now immortalized with the colorful boats on various photos of outdoor-enthusiasts Canadians! With this in mind, thank you very much for that and especially many greetings from Canada!!! We are looking forward to October! Jens and Mareike

In the early summer of 2018 at one of our day trainings on river Nahe (Link in German), Christine got into a Packraft for the first time. There she must have caught something, because shortly after she had her own Packraft with which she visited us in autumn of the same year for the Multiday Compact training in the Hunsrück area. In a positive way this demanded a lot from her and apparently made her want more. Christine has followed her announcement from the mail below and will venture with us in June for the first time in Tyrol into whitewater.

The e-mail below came from Christine a few days after the Hunsrück training in the Hunsrück. Many thanks for these nice words - but why save on the chocolate croissants? But read for yourself:

"I really enjoyed the weekend and paddling, and I don't regret buying a boat for a single second. And the enthusiasm that you and Moni show for it just sweeps away all doubts and worries. This is really great! Also the campfire and cheese fondue were great! Untrained as I was, I reached my physical limits during the luggage march :). All the happier and prouder I am to have managed this nevertheless - and next time I will certainly pack more "reasonably" or expedition-suited and leave chocolate croissants at home ;).

So thank you very much for your patience, peace and of course your support. Even if your photos were great, Iceland is probably one too many for me :). But I'd really like a course in Soca or Tyrol :). Let's see what the next year will bring. I will keep myself up to date in any case!"

Marie has often been on dry paths before she decided to dive into the Packrafting adventure with us. With the aim of participating in an Iceland expedition she roamed the Hunsrück with us in spring, then rode the waves of Tyrol to finally join us on the lava rock in July. Shortly before Christmas this picture of her with ice on her helmet came from the Vorderrhein together with a nice feedback we would like to share here.

On the picture below you can see Marie at the Tyrol-Training.

"Hi Sebastian! Yesterday the great calendar and the christmas card arrived! Thank you very much for that and best regards from Switzerland. I have moved here in the meantime and was actually during the weekend at -9 degrees riding the Rhein near Versam, something that I would never have dared to do without LWA. So thank you very much for everything I could learn from you in this area this year. I have heard that the Bayern training is unfortunately already full... Too bad. But if there's something very crazy in the pipeline again, then I'd love to be there again."

Christophe had already tried Packrafting in calm waters in Switzerland before joining us in the whitewater waves of Soca in 2018. Shortly after he has climbed out of the waters of the cemetery run his eyes have shone so brightly that we asked how it was. The result is this short sequence. He speaks in Swiss German and what he says translates to: "Cemetry-Run: This was just awesome, just amazing, this is a dream, just do it, just come here."

He also left us this e-mail after the course:

"Many thanks again for these great, extraordinary and unforgettable 5 days I was able to experience with you, Andi and the whole LWA team. I have thought on the whole way back about the countless small and big actions in and out of the water with huge joy and look forward to the next expedition in the coming April."