Caleta La Linca - a safe harbor! Out there it's rough...

Pos: here
Loc: Caleta La Linca
Acc: tent
Dist: 67 km
Start: 5:05 End: 16:50

Tomorrow:
Estimated landing: 30 km to a small harbor near La Plenchade
Estimated starting time: Right after sunrise
Estimated landing time: Well before sunset

Sorry I forgot to mention it was really *raining* yesterday night for at least 30 sec – the first rain since Valparaiso!!! Plus we saw the fist time a fishing boat going out with three persons as usual – but *two* of them were women!

Our night in the middle of the “city” was quiet -well, besides me having to re-inflate my sleeping pad about five times after a bad repair job and sleeping on almost the bare concrete floor – and Peter was chasing up some barking dogs when he had to go out at midnight to take care of his diarrhea. Then we had to make some experiments today on fortunately calm water with another time for the same problem in the morning for Peter, then it was my turn in the afternoon also…not sure what we had eaten wrong…

The job was possible to be done with one person stabilizing the other kayak by leaning over the bow, and the other one simply hanging the stripped butt over the kayak cockpit side while squatting inside the cockpit and holding to the other boat When I’ll be by myself it is a bit more tricky…

But fortunately the digestion problem didn’t prevent us from paddling 67 km today and we enjoy a nice dinner tonight. Since we are in Peru we started to buy our water in bottles, which everyone recommended. In Chile, we still could fill the water bags from the tap.

The paddle was way faster today than yesterday, on quite calm water surface with mostly no wind. The surf around the mouth of Camana River was becoming very nasty looking from the distance, though we estimated we could have landed at the beginning of the long beach and at the end.

Still when we came to the end of the very long beach, we preferred to not go in, as amazingly the surf seemed to be growing while coming closer

The beautiful sheltered bay of Caleta La Linca

We had three more options which we previously found on Google Earth. Two beaches, and one very narrow caleta. As we were not sure how the surf on the beaches would be like, and if we’d be able to paddle into the very narrow caleta, we were a little worried to keep on paddling after long open beach which had at least sand!

When the water had been quite smooth with eventually quite low swell again up to the end of the long beach, as soon as we were turning to the west, the coast became steep rocky cliffs with a lot of caves on the bottom, which were reflecting the swell quite nasty. This kept on going all along in the corner, where they again made a nature reserve with a solid wall – the same like on that headland after which we landed on that military area beach. anyway, we saw two people walking inside the wall…

If these people would have walked fully to the edge of the cliffs, they were quite likely to break into the earth and fall into one of the deep caves…or they’d disturb one of the many bird colonies sitting on top of a few headlands like wallpaper…

We kept on going to the first beach we had marked, which had a narrow entrance between an outer rocky reef and the cliffs inside. We got our safety gear on, and paddled carefully got closer…

Once a fat swell started to break on the outer reef, the reflection on the cliffs was so bad we didn’t feel comfortable to get fully up to the beach and to deal with the dumper…we’d rather be checking out the other two options fist…just in case they’d be worse, I’d have gone in here. Peter would have rather preferred to paddle through the night…

But we noticed the general conditions those 2,5 km further along were getting better as the reflective waves were getting less. The second beach was looking already much wider and easier accessible, though having also a dumper.

Camp with local fishermen huts at Caleta La Linca

But there was still this narrow caleta…we first couldn’t spot it, but as we had a way point, we found the quite hidden entrance easy and could find a calmish line to get in. Once we were fully in and behind the reflections, we already could see two boats in there, and that the landing was an easy safe one, with access to the houses we saw from the distance on the second beach. A perfect calm landing! Thank goodness…I can’t say how relieved we were…not to have taken the risky first narrow beach, and although we could check the second beach by just walking there and the dumper seemed to be possible to handle at least in the far left corner, we had taken the right choice! Patience…

View out of an old fishing hut over Caleta La Linca

The many houses turned out to be only beach sheds made out of this natural woven material we found already quite often. Most of them were abandoned, but only the best one on the corner was inhabited with three friendly men.

The natural wall material most fishing huts are made of in Peru

We made our camp on the other end of the beach, and will enjoy a well deserved sleep in tomorrow! Only 30 km to the next safe landing in a small caleta with a village in the background.

Condors at Caleta La Linca

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