Pos: here
Loc: Caleta Milagro
Acc: tent
Dist: 44,7 km
Start: 8:45 End: 17:15

The noise of the night besides the crashing surf was a continuous frog concert of hundreds of frogs, sometimes stopping all together on one sound, just to start over again with a new song by first one guy, then two, and then all hundreds…amazing…

I had a good launch with good timing, I just got afloat and hopped over the just broken foam into the next line of two or three smaller breakers, until I reached the main huge breaker, waited long enough to see no more wave piling up behind the just broken one, and sprinted out. Good.

Paddling went slow all morning against the tide running up. I was just halfway across that big bay with a lot of villages on the hills, when the wind breezed up and the tide changed. Not that I was racing then , but an improvement from 4,5 km/h to 5,6 km/h is what I have to be satisfied with in 2,50 – 3,50 m swell. I am really wondering about my vertical distance I am covering on such days…

The crossing of that big bay was not really exciting with moderate swell, and it was just nice to get out of reach of the crashing surf noise for a while. It became quite choppy once I reached the northern point. This headland was not only long and rocky, but the swell of the whole bay was piling up at that corner, creating a nice back wash! Soon as I turned in after that headland, the water became more tame, and I paddled for a while on reasonable calm water. But soon the wind whipped the swell up again, and now I had to paddle with a constant look over my left shoulder for breaking waves. No violent ones, but still annoying and challenging your concentration.

After the inhabited big bay, I left two good landing beaches behind me, aiming for the last possible beach for today. The very next landing would be a big river mouth 14 km further ahead, but this was too much for tonight!

This beach looked wonderful sheltered, and I picked the almost very right corner, but left the first beach aside where I saw some huts and a few people obviously collecting sea weed on their beach.

I was landing close to the river mouth, but for a paddle into the river the tide was too low. But landing was easy, one moderate dumper on a flat beach on low tide, all was sheltered enough.

Soon a man form the inhabited beach to the right came up and greeted me friendly, and as usual I gave him my card to overcome the language barrier. A beautiful woman with two teenage daughter came as well, and all of them were friendly and quite impressed as all locals so far! They showed me the dry spot in the river mouth where I could put up my tent, and I started unloading.

Another man named Luco came up to us, I just managed to shake his hand, and made him understanding “Yo soy Allemande, no hablamos Espanol”, and then an unbroken South American choleric temper came out – I didn’t understand a word, but Luco, probably the first man’s brother and some how the “boss” of that area, seemed to blame the first man about how could he already allow me to camp here without asking him, it is his ground (really?), he couldn’t take the responsibility and doesn’t want “adventurers” to stay here…or such was the sense of a *continuous* choleric unfriendly word “water fall” of about 15 min, spoken not toward me, but toward his brother. In between, I managed to give him my card as well, but he seemed only to be interested in his own word swell and passed it on to the girls.

In another breath taking second I managed to ask him directly in my broken Spanish, trying to catch a look into his eyes: “Luco, permiso, carpa (sleeping gesture) una noche, manana I’m gone (hand waving offshore)” which he somehow answered with a barely nodding toward me, but he continued to talk loud and continuously unfriendly to his brother. The whole time, I stood there, doing nothing, not getting upset or such, just waiting in my my precious recovery time, as this argument was not my business (as I didn’t understand anything). I shared understanding glances with the poor embarrassed woman who tried to tell me what he was saying. One girl even dared to join the tempered discussion, she obviously wasn’t afraid of this outburst.

But eventually he was walking off, and on leaving I saw a very brief smile toward me in his face – “see how well I was doing it?”…he seemed to respect me, but not his brother allowing me first to stay here…I hope the nice woman and the two girls were not *his* wife, but the other man’s…the woman even cried a bit of shame when he was gone…my god, I was in the middle of a heated family argument!

I eventually finished unloading, and started dragging my boat up the beach to the dry camp spot. The woman and the girls helped me dragging and carrying my gear, but the man left…but I assume he needed to follow his brother back to work…later I heard him shouting, and the ladies had to also run off. What a despot! I saw the girls collecting sea weed close to my tent later, being curious, but they didn’t dare to come close again! Are the drying mad burning the sea weed, or eating it?

The whole bay and river mouth is a beautiful spot of land, with cows on the meadows. A few horse riders came in and out, people living in these remote areas seem still to have to rely on their horses! I think I saw the three ladies riding as well, but am not sure. Just hope my night will be quiet, and I’m not getting bothered by any hot tempered family member…Happy Easter!