Pos: here
Loc: Caleta Quilca
Acc: tent
Dist: 61,1 km
Start: 5:20 End: 16:45

Tomorrow:
Estimated landing: 60 km further north
Estimated starting time: Right after sunrise
Estimated landing time: Well before sunset

The sleep felt like only moderate with earplugs in, but when I woke after midnight, the music was finished. Still I had to sleep with a scarf on my eyes, as the street lantern was shining into our tent.

We were both packing a quite heavy loaded boat after the fresh shopping, but we had still some space left!

The first headland into Puerto Materani was already quite an impressing widely spread rock garden. When we decided to paddle through the last of two big islands, the water in between had quite big waves in a bit of a tidal race. Puerto Materani outside was full with a line of anchored larger fishing boats – when all of them are going out at once, the sea must be empty of all fish!

The stretch until the next headland between Isla Hornillos was a bit boring, but the gap between the island and headland showed some fascinating caves! I paddled close to one entrance, and could spot in the darkness a rocky beach with plenty of penguins inside! The walls before the cave had a “wallpaper” of birds, which amazingly didn’t shy away when I was sitting in there! What a place! On top of the island we saw a few walls and one concrete building – but as there was no landing anywhere, the people building it must have landed via helicopter or UFO – or they may have entered via the huge cave???

The next stretch into the bay had a bunch of lovely caletas with fine sandy beaches we already saw on Google earth – what a pity we wanted to keep on going until Caleta Quilca! This was the last landing before a long long beach for tomorrow…

Quilca itself was an ancient harbor, with about 50 boats in there! A bunch of houses, which probably extend even to the top of the hills.

We could land on a rocky but very calm beach, and were greeted by several curious locals. We unloaded, and got a place for the tent on the porch of the port captain’s building. Tent and boats filled the whole front of the house, but we were off the “traffic on the main road”. Surely building camp was carefully watched and commented on by about 20 locals, we took a mutual pictures, but then I made stripping movements to show we’d need a bit of privacy for changing! I’m hoping for a peaceful night with no barking dogs or cars coming to the village center and our camp…