[pe2-image src=”http://lh6.ggpht.com/-NtfHFX7AmGY/Uhaqrt1dnmI/AAAAAAAAWWg/CebnJQ6EBIY/s144-c-o/P8180052.JPG” href=”https://picasaweb.google.com/112133179186774955122/SouthAmericaSection2Stage15VenezuelaBoarderColombiaToCaracas#5915102828612656738″ caption=”Hundred thousands of solid jelly fish almost block my way, formed like mushrooms, feeling like a massive rubber ball on touching them” type=”image” alt=”P8180052.JPG” ]

Back to serious paddling!

Pos: here
Loc: wide surfy beach
Acc: tent
Dist: 46 km
Start: 6:25 End: 16:10

I dared to sleep with ear plugs tonight, the noise of the tent flapping in the strong wind is annoying otherwise. All quiet, good sleep.

Launching on very low tide made me again dragging the boat out over shallow reefs, but it could be worse. I knew after 15 km the launches would be different…

I cut a tiny bit of the almost 90 degree corner, turning south now. I found myself about a kilometer offshore among an endless field of those white champignon mushroom like firm jellyfish, each about 15 cm in diameter. I literally had to shovel myself through that floating mass, and the field seemed endless, just got a bit less dense. Closing up to the coast again, I noticed the shore was not a shallow calm reef anymore, but surely with this general wind direction an endless wide surf belt. Here we go! I just got lulled in by the calm quiet pushing paddling…

The wind came now just perpendicular to the coast, barely still pushing, but the wide surf belt didn’t really stop anywhere -I had to paddle through a minefield of uncontrolled, unpredictable non violent wind breakers, which could certainly trash you, if you didn’t watch out. I caught a few sideways, and had a long bumpy broaching ride in before the breaking wave came to an end. But the force of those wind waves is way less than a trashy roller breaking from swell, and I was not really close to capsizing any time. Still it was nerve wrecking, hearing the rush before and behind and next to you, always trying to avoid to get caught. At some point I really felt hungry and needed a rest, but could not get hand off the paddle. Going further out was no real option either, I couldn’t see the end of this minefield. I simply went in, either for a break, or to hopefully find a reasonably wide belt of shallow almost unbroken water. But this may exist elsewhere than in the Caribbean… I rode in, untrashed diagonally through, and gave myself an hour of rest for food, mental and physical recovery. It was only lunch time, there was no other option than to go out again. Wet, but no problem with some punching.

The same story continued for another two hours, but it gradually got calmer and lower. Still the surf belt is over 500m wide, and noisy as hell once camping on the beach. I camped about a kilometre behind an obviously popular Sunday afternoon outing spot, the wide beach was a highway for motorbikes and cars with bunches of happy youngsters. The first car was already stopping for me before I really had been landing, it took me a while to identify it as a taxi and not as a police car. The driver was waving me to come to him, with me being loaded with my heavy gear bags and him keeping his fat ass inside. Does he really think I am stopping for that detour? On my way back from the dunes he eventually made his way out to ask me if I needed transport? I pointed at my kayak, that was my own personal transport! But you guy can help me transporting it up the wide beach! And I made him grab the tow rope with me together before he could think what happened to him 🙂

Joint forces the kayak was up in the dunes, and the driver and his wife, both well fed, were impressed by my story. Later at night he came back and tried to tell me something about scary people down the beach, still in the hope of a transport? No way, I was talking nicely to some youngster groups on motorbikes, all impressed as usual and nowhere close to being naughty, all others drove by slowly to grab a look or just uninterested.

I think I can make it in two days to Maracaibo, but let’s see how the headwind and waves will develop once the coast turns even more in.