Pos: here
Loc: 8 km north of Cabo San Isidro
Acc: Ricardo + Ely’s house in Punta Arenas
Dist: 65,9 km
Start: 6:35 End: 19:15

After a good night’s sleep, I woke to a dry and almost sunny, calm morning! Day three with calm weather in a row, but unfortunately the last one…but it will do to make it to my meeting place with Kiko! 60something kilometers to paddle.

The first crossing of a 4 km wide fjord had a lot of current against me, and I made only 4 km/h. But soon paddling close to the next island, the current was gone, and I could enjoy wild rugged steep mountain scenery! I paddled very close to the rocky wall, and watched a few smaller seal colonies sunning themselves on some rocks or basking single ones in the water. Nice view!

Soon I saw an animal I haven’t seen for months, and I really didn’t expect to see here, deep into the fjordland water: A single WHALE! A small one, but definitive a whale, as he showed his beautiful tail on diving. He must have beein swimming up all the channels to that spot! Amazing what drove him to go there…

When I decided to cross the channel over to Isla Dawson, one big boat approached me from the south, but I was across before it reached me. Either a modern fishing boat, or an “official” one, as it had only a number on the bow. But a red Navy boat???

Isla Dawson  has a completely different scenery on it’s shore, no steep walls any more, but it was shallow and rocky, with a few accessible beaches, though mostly reef fringed.

Still I found two, about one kilometer long, beautiful wide river beaches, with even some 20 m of dry hinteland! A beach quality I haven’t seen here at all so far since the glaciers! It would have been a perfect campsite.

But I kept on paddling, planning to paddle over to Cabo San Isidro and to cross Magellan Strait for the second time on this trip. But here, it was only 10 km wide! On my way down at the east coast it was 30 km wide, and wayyyyyyy  rougher! Still, there were some 1,5 meter high wind waves developing, and I was eventuallly happy to be across and in the calm water agian. You’re getting spoilt paddling calm waters only…!

The light house of Cabo San Isidro was visible from the other side already, and I was aiming to go there the shortest distance. In the bay before, there was a yacht anchoring. The light house looked like another “Hotel Navy”, but it was not. I didn’t need one either…There was another big house at the base of the light house, obviously a private one as well.

A Zodiac with a bunch of tourists were enjoying the company of a bunch of big dolphins around that house, and I was wondering if that was already the meeting point with Kiko? But the GPS coordinates he gave me were clearly showing a meeting point 8,5 km further up the coast, and I didn’t see anyone waving frantically from the beach, though paddling close! So another hour of paddling along a low easy accesible coast with beaches all along.

I saw at some point a red objct moving, and eventually realized that was a 4-wheel driving car making it’s way along a path up to me between the beach and the forest! So you obviously can drive to the lighthouse, but only with 4-wheel drive. Kiko’s car must have no 4-wheel drive then, as he would be waiting further north-east.

Another car with some kids running in front of  it passed me slowly, and even a guy on a bike made his way up to the light house!!!

But soon I saw Kiko waiting on the agreed GPS spot, this was as far as he could drive his old US-pick up truck with no 4-wheel drive. Though we agreed on meeting at 7 pm, and I was only 15 min late on this 65 km paddling day, he had already been waiting since 2 pm!! Thanks for picking me up, Kiko!

The drive along the coast to Punta Arenas I was envisioning I had to paddle all that 70-80 km way…dead calm boring water and not too pretty coastline with small fishermen and holiday houses here and there, and agaist the strong wind the same way back…this was the way better solution!

We went  first to pick up all the parcels from Kiko’s house which got sent for me there, and then we drove to Ricardo and Ely’s house, who had a nice seperate apartment upstairs free all for myself! Thanks for hosting me, Ricardo and Ely!

I was dead tired from the day, but couldn’t fall asleep until way after midnight, too many distractions with shower, dinner, and being online again…