Pos: here
Loc: Bahia Juanchuquita
Acc: tent
Dist: 00 km

Tomorrow:
Estimated landing: Punta Shode
Estimated starting time: Before sunrise
Estimated landing time: Just before sunset

A well deserved sleep-in until 6 am, no hammering machines were waking us, just the whistling of our bird neighbors. They seem to have accepted us as part of their colony, and we do our best not to disturb the nesting ones.

We got two visitors this afternoon – Silva and Xenia, the nature park rangers on the island. They were obviously not really too pleased about us camping there, but accepted our unavoidable presence as part of my extraordinary trip. No chance landing on the unprotected long stretch of beach, and the paddle up to here was already quite an effort and we simply need to rest on land now, staying mostly in our tent! They seem to realize we don’t bother any of the nesting birds, stay close to the tent, and are in general well behaved foreigners 🙂

My lack of Spanish, but hard attempts to communicate were this time rather an advantage, as otherwise we’d have ended up in a discussion about permits and responsibilities, as not the coast guard was in charge of this place who is nice and friendly while supervising us, but rather the minister of agriculture or such. Surely, “no entiendo”…all good, all friendly, and we are off tomorrow morning before sunrise!

I took a few pictures of the about 30 nesting pelicans close by, and really enjoyed watching them from a reasonable distance. They seem to take turns on the nesting job, and one bird came with another mouthful of old feathers he was picking from some old nest somewhere else. The nesting one was taking them carefully, and stuffing them around his body. all with this very long beak!

Still, the island, not only the beaches, was littered not only with birds of all kinds, but also with many, many old plastic bottles, probably dumped from the many fishing boats offshore. Some of them were flying around in a small tornado going along a ridge in the rocks. It would be a pleasure volunteer job to walk around with huge sacks and collecting them all! A nature reserve should be natural, not a rubbish dump…

A dead turtle and a dead seal were washed ashore on a tidal cycle, and about twenty vultures were busy doing their natural job. A life’s circle!

I would have loved to walk around the island, but as we were promising to stay close to the tent, I only was climbing a higher hill close by which was almost bare of birds. What a view across the whole island! Sandy beaches and rocky bays with bird colonies everywhere, also fishing boats around everywhere on both sides. I sat on the peak for a while, the warm wind flowing around me, and simply enjoyed our rest stop on such a natural gem. What a privileged life I have!

Later, I started in my tent a new book about a guy living in the Peruvian jungle with some head hunters in 1955. Another natural part of this world! Maybe one day…

The plan for tomorrow is to leave before sunrise, to tackle the almost 80 km in one day to a calm beach behind Punta Shode. We may stay another rest day after this 80 km effort. The following paddling day will be a 70 km crossing to Foca, which has a small harbour we are hoping to be able to enter. Then after, it’s just about a mere 25 km left to Paita, our destination before the x-mas break! So far for the plan…if all goes well, we will be there on the 12th around lunchtime!