Sea Kayaking / Canoeing in October

The Lesse is Belgium's best-loved river descent, and paddling it is the classic way into the Ardennes. From spring to autumn, outfitters at Anseremme ferry you upstream to Houyet or Gendron and set you loose to float and paddle the 12 or 21km back down to the confluence with the Meuse below Dinant, through a steep wooded valley that is a Natura 2000 reserve. This is not big whitewater: the Lesse is mostly gentle, quick-flowing water with a scattering of small rapids, weirs and shallow chutes that keep it lively without demanding real skill, which is exactly why it works as a first river trip and a family day out. The scenery does the heavy lifting, with the cliff-top Chateau de Walzin rising straight from the water and kingfishers along the banks. Levels depend on rainfall, and the river can close in a high-summer drought or run fast after storms, so the descent is seasonal and weather-dependent rather than a sure thing on any given day.

Matka is a limestone gorge on the dammed Treska river half an hour from Skopje's center, and the kayaking is flat-water paddling on jade-green lake past medieval cave monasteries and Vrelo Cave, one of the deepest underwater caves surveyed in Europe. The paddling pedigree is real: Matka's slalom course hosted the first world wildwater championship in 1975 and remains the home of Macedonian kayaking, with rental singles and doubles by the hour and guided small-group trips from the capital. It is the rare capital-city canyon where an after-breakfast decision puts you on the water by ten.

From the beach at Cape Maclear you can paddle out to islands almost no one else reaches. Kayak Africa runs a three-day sea-kayak trail across Lake Malawi National Park, tracing the shore and then striking out to Domwe and Mumbo, an uninhabited island ten kilometres offshore covered in baobab and fig. The water is clear and calm, cichlids flicker under the hull, and fish eagles work the shoreline. You sleep in walk-in tents on the islands, swim straight off the rocks and cover about 25 kilometres over the trip. It suits paddlers of any level, since the boats are stable and the days are unhurried.

Sai Kung is where Hong Kong stops looking like Hong Kong. Twenty minutes by boat from the seafood restaurants that line the town waterfront, the coast breaks up into a maze of green islands, clear bays and some of the most dramatic volcanic rock in Asia. This is the Sai Kung Volcanic Rock Region of the Hong Kong UNESCO Global Geopark, where a super-eruption around 140 million years ago left cliffs of neatly stacked hexagonal columns, and the sea has since carved arches, caves and stacks into them. A kayak is the right tool for it: you can slip inside sea caves, paddle under arches and land on the white sand of bays like Long Ke Wan that no road reaches. The water is warm and usually calm in the sheltered channels, the geology is world-class, and marine life from sea urchins to the occasional green turtle turns up in the shallows. Guided trips out of Sha Ha beach and the town pier pair the paddling with snorkelling over coral and a stop for lunch, and the guides read the wind and tides that decide which of the arches and open crossings are safe on the day. The best window is the cooler, calmer stretch from autumn through spring, outside the summer typhoon season.

Upi Bay is one of the great canoe journeys of the Pacific, crossed the way the Kunie people have always crossed it: by traditional outrigger sailing pirogue. From Saint-Joseph Bay a Kanak piroguer raises a small sail and glides you across water so shallow and clear that eroded limestone stacks, each crowned with pandanus and pine, seem to float like buoys, in a scene endlessly compared to Ha Long Bay. Along the way you pass over turtles, eagle rays and a natural shark nursery in the seagrass, the boat silent but for the wind and the paddle. The crossing lands you for a walk through to Oro Bay, where a channel in the reef forms a sheltered natural swimming pool of astonishing colour, fed by the tide. Doing it by pirogue rather than by motor is the point: it is slow, quiet, guided by islanders, and it connects you to a living Kanak seafaring tradition as much as to the scenery.

The Lower Zambezi is one of the few great parks you explore from the water, drifting the river's channels by canoe past drinking elephant, buffalo and pods of hippo while crocodiles slide off the banks. The park runs along the northern side of the Zambezi beneath a steep escarpment, facing Zimbabwe's Mana Pools across the river, and its floodplain of winterthorn and acacia holds large elephant and buffalo herds, lion prides, leopard and packs of endangered African wild dog. Game drives and walking safaris cover the woodland and floodplain, but the signature experience is a guided canoe safari down the Chifungulu and other channels, watching wildlife from the water rather than above it. The river is also one of Africa's premier tigerfishing waters, and the dry-season game viewing along its banks is exceptional.