Pos: here
Loc: Punta Acertado
Acc: tent
Dist: 0 km

A calm day off. Not if you’re looking at the weather – it was blowing 20-25 knots south west. Whitecaps all over, even reaching into my quiet bay. Not a real pleasure to be paddling against such stuff. Especially as the remaining km to Camarones were 45 km, and the weather was supposed to be easy tomorrow.

Still I had a bad feeling when – as fore casted, the wind calmed down around 4 pm, turning into a very calm, sunny evening. But it made no sense to head out that late…

So I rather carried on enjoying the day, and decided to make a camp fire – the very first one of this trip! Maybe because it was the first time I had a reasonable amount of dry driftwood lying around?

To start the fire I hid it behind a big rock, inside a ring of big cobbles, as it was still windy around 4.30 pm, but it was tough to get it started. Well, if you want to do it the “natural” way with small pieces of wood, dry grass and even a bit of spare toilet paper…nothing worked, it was still too windy.

Ok, then I needed the help of my gas camp stove, I thought lit separately, a small dry stick to put under my small pile of wanna-be fire…still no good.

Ok, then it needed to be the “manly” way, and I pulled out of my kit a small bottle of white spitit… a spoonful over every thing, and this was working! 🙂
The pile of driftwood I could collect was not huge, so it didn’t last really long…but it was still a change in the day’s routine. I’d loved to have something to roast on it, potatoes, marshmallows, but dry pasta and rice was not the right thing to prepare on a natural barbecue. And my titanium cook pot was not made for boiling on the open fire…

This morning I was doing a longer walk north, toward a few other seemingly nice sandy and cobblestone beaches, but all of them were inaccessible on low tide. All fringed with rocky reefs! I think I was quite lucky with my beach, maybe being the only one around being able to land on on low tide. Bahia Cruz before was more friendly and less rugged!

It was interesting to see there were lots of dry cow pats around, but no cows…it seems to be off season for them being out here. Still, my herds of sheep were in sight, and so were a lot of well-worn animal tracks through the low stony grass land behind the rocky beaches. I’m wondering what the animals are feeding on, the grass didn’t really seem to be inviting at this point. But the rivers were dry too, so there must be another time of the year where it is more hospitable out here!

Besides the walks and my fire setting, my re-gained brand new e-book was saving and directing my day today – I was diving into a fully different world of stories. All on a bright sunny, but very windy day! But it was warm enough to be out there all day sitting in the lee of rocks or of my tent.

Lunch was a creative combination of tuna, mayonnaise, two hard boiled eggs and an apple mixed to a salad on crackers…edible. But I am very much missing variation in the choice of food I can buy here…but no complaints! The fantastic landcape setting and the warmish spring sunshine made up for that!