Pos: here
Loc: between Punta Blanca and Punta Charao
Acc: tent
Dist: 83,9 km
Start: 3:30 End: 18:00

Tomorrow:
Estimated landing: no paddling tomorrow!

Getting up that early is no problem for me, even with no alarm clock. Peter would sleep though with his earplugs in, so I had to wake him by shining my headlamp into his face…

It had been raining very lightly the two nights we stayed here, it is obvious that at this corner a climate change is starting. When I opened the tent door with my headlamp on, a bunch of nasty tiny flies, luckily not biting, flattered around my face. It was so bad, that Peter had problems to put in his contact lenses and had to remove the headlamp from his head. I switched to red light in my lamp, which was a bit better.

We were packing quickly, and easily launched into the silent calm night. Bye, bye to all the birds (and the stinging smell of guano you can not escape…)!

A few lights at the end of the island indicated some boats anchoring there for the night, or being busy fishing? It was also very foggy in those early morning hours, and we had no stars or the moon out to navigate. Still it was not pitch dark any more.

The speed was great on oily water, no wind, and probably a current helped to flood us north. As we were better rested now, paddling those two night hours was at least efficient, and I felt no need for taking a nap 🙂

80 km were ahead of us, and we needed to do distance to be able to reach the very sheltered headland of Punta Nonura before darkness. But the speed stayed very fast today, again a light wind, later stronger, was pushing us along additionally to the current. Still three penguins though in the now again very cold water of the Humbold current…

As soon as we were reaching the first headland of Punta Negra on the coast again, we noticed the surf was already down to a reasonable size. Following were a bunch of river mouth entrances which looked like neat bays to land, just in case. Punta Tur, Punta Nac, and then the main headland of Punta Falsa – they all gradually decreased the shore break , as the coast was turning more and more north, and after Punta Falsa even north east. Yahooo! The fat surf (and horrible landings) are over now…

Around Punta Nonura, we saw a wide calm beach, which had a few houses at the beginning. It was around 20 knots of wind eventually, and around this corner it was blowing offshore. Was it that ugly wind that we didn’t pay attention to a floating yellow sign which obviously indicated some warning of something? We saw something like a mussel farm in the bay, and guessed the sign must belong to that, warning larger boats not to run into it.

The buildings ashore were looking quite new, but that they actually were belonging to a military area we found out only when we decided to land way behind the last building on an area of beach which looked wild. A boat came by our landing spot to look at us, and soon a man came running quickly all the way from the buildings, to tell us this was a private beach of the military. Ok, well, we didn’t know! Sorry…but no friendly talk persuaded him to allow us to stay here, his boss on the VHF radio made it clear to him. Not like on that other occasion around Ilo where we already had put up tent, it was dark and we had no other option to go further.

Here, although we already had unloaded our gear, the guy told us just around the next headland the military area ended, and another nice beach of similar sheltered landing would start. There was no other option for us than to agree, pack our boats again and to launch. Why was there no sign on our chart? It may be a new area, as the buildings looked new, and the mussel farm may have nothing to do with the coastal area. But we should maybe have better paid attention to the floating yellow sign…

A truck came with four more young men, but none of them was looking like being the boss to be convinced to let us stay…

Peter now wanted to get away again so quickly he made an impatient horrible stupid launch through the single low shore breaker, *three* times he caught a full fat wash of sand water in his face and he lost is hat. I just waited in the shallows when the really low breaker was down to nothing and got out dry…and I rather wanted to turn around after I noticed his precious Peruvian coast guard hat was gone, though Peter was so angry about himself he’d rather be going without!

I liked to see if the guys would be fishing out the hat which must be flooded to shore within the next few breakers. And really, one guy caught the hat quite soon, I landed again, turned around in the shallows, and paddled out with no problem after waiting for a lull…

So with his hat again and a boat soon following us checking if we’d really leave the area, we paddled the short 3 km distance to the next headland, and found a beach which was even better and more private than the one with the mussel farm and buildings! All good…besides the one hour delay after a long day of paddling. But we’d have again off tomorrow and would be able to explore this beautiful coast a bit!

The landing was even easier though one small breaker, and the wind was further down. Hundreds of red crabs were occupying our beach, quite cute to watch! They were later making quite some noise around our tent, digging their holes, and being attracted by our headlamp light inside.

The beach had a few green bushes of a dry river bed in the hinterland, and was generally looking very friendly and wild for a remote relaxing day off! All good eventually…