Pos: here
Loc: Playa Hermosa
Acc: tent
Dist: 48,9 km
Start: 6:20 End: 15:40

Tomorrow:
Estimated landing: Puerto Caballas
Estimated starting time: Right after sunrise
Estimated landing time: Well before sunset

I’d call Puerto Lomas now “Chicken Village”! As I heard first time at 2.15 am a concert of many, many roosters, there must be also even more many, many chicken…I could tell their voices apart on the second part of the morning concert around 3 am, I categorized them into soprano, mezzo-soprano, tenor and bass – well, the last two not really…WHY THE HECK ARE ROOSTERS MAKING SUCH A NOISE IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT WELL BEFORE DAWN???

The launching was kind of escaping out of a zoo, where we were the apes. Really all friendly people, and who can blame them being curious! But we were disappearing into the morning fog very soon. Thanks to the kind officer of the coast guard for looking after us in such a “city” landing spot!

We had 41 km on the GPS to paddle and called this a “short” day with even leaving later as usually, but with all those turns around corners it summed up eventually to almost 50 km. Still no 70 km like yesterday, but we took it very slow today, being aware to have way more time.

We definitively used it on going around the last headland into our bay – what a magnificent bird place! Millions of birds in endless formation rows were flying in or in circles around us and the headland! I compared those waving lines to a fascinating laser light show, streaming around the sky in ever new formations. Amazing! It was not an unorganized mess of birds anywhere which I already saw on other bird headlands, no, these guys were fling in lines only and making amazing patterns in front of the headland or in the bare sky. We sat there and enjoyed the spectacle for probably more than half an hour.

Our landing on a small left part of Playa Hermosa gave us a bit of privacy, different to the long public and windy beach. From the distance, the long beach looked really fancy with palm trees and seating areas, but coming closer it was plenty of trash everywhere, and only the probably newly planted palm tress were still in good shape.

Some days, there was some effort taken to make it beautiful down here, but maintaining the appearance is a different thing. The one and only WC house was out of order and disassembled, and in a beautiful double rock arch between the beaches there was the shit paper piling up in layers ever since. Times ago it had some light down here to make it a bit like a promenade way, but just the remainders of the poles were left. Cars are more popular on this beach than humans barefoot and in swimming outfits! The tries of putting up trash tons were all pushed over and people were dumping their garbage anywhere. We just found on our beach a halfway reasonable corner, probably because a newly blown sand dune was covering the worst. What a pity! Still, I had worse places to camp, and the view out to sea is magnificent!

At least a big desalination plant just between the beaches seems to be working with s bit of noise, but the tiny surf covers even that for us. And no roosters in sight!