Pos: here
Loc: Bahia Las Animas
Acc: tent
Dist: 40,3 km
Start: 7:50 End: 17:45

Tomorrow:
Estimated landing: Punta Carrizalilla
Estimated starting time: Right after sunrise
Estimated landing time: Well before sunset

The *fourth* night with loud noisy music!!! The hard working sea weed collector guys in the neighbor’s camp obviously couldn’t drink their beer at night without turning the car radio on f… them… Fortunately this time the earplugs had a bit ,mpre efficiency as it was not as loud as in Caldera, and they went to bed “already” at 2 am. How nice a quiet night would be…

The last night’s forecast was following wind as usual, but what did we get today? A nasty almost 15 knots headwind until early afternoon…we were so nicely spoiled not to have to battle into headwinds…so this day’s paddle was a bit tedious. It went more than 1,5 km slower per hour on average. Fortunately the wind slowed down the last hours, and the sun came out. It can’t be all bad!

The highway was our company all day, amazing how many cars, coaches and trucks are heading just along the coastal north-south highway…at least some entertainment in front of the sandy-rocky desert landscape.

The swell was reasonable low, and when we entered our landing bay, it was calm. We decided not to paddle fully into Chanaral, as we will cross the bay tomorrow and we don’t need anything in town. We landed on a half-rocky beach with low surf and a bit of sand, so aiming carefully into the sandy gaps was necessary. Not easy even on a tiny surf side broach, and it almost washed me sideways on a rock. Almost… Peter came in also all right, and we made camp on a highway pit stop-like beach place. It is soooo dirty here! A bunch of nicely built barbecue places, but all messed up with a lot of garbage. No wonder if there aren’t any bins provided… Fortunately the artificial sand strip where we were camping on was clean white.

We just started to work inside the tent on our camp chores, and I just switched on my cell phone, when it already was ringing…no, sorry, there can just be nobody calling me on my Chilean number. I didn’t pick up. Peter was less impatient, and answered the call from what I knew must be some Navy guys not understanding they shouldn’t call us. He was so patient to try to explain for more than 15 min the usual questions they didn’t understand anyway on the other end, where we were, estimated start tomorrow, estimated landing tomorrow…YES, WE HAVE A WEBSITE PROVIDING ALL THIS INFORMATION EVERY NIGHT! 15 min battery power lost, and 15 min of precious recovery time.

Half an hour later, surely the same guys???, three of them, showed up, and asked again the same stuff!!! I didn’t go out…Peter again was so patient, to waste about 20 min of our precious recovery time to try to make them understand YES, WE HAVE A WEBSITE PROVIDING ALL THIS INFORMATION EVERY NIGHT!!!

Amazingly, these three Navy guys were from Caldera, in whose Gobernacion Maritimas we have already been paddling without being bothered at night for quite some days…ANYONE NEW IN THE OFFICE??? And yes, there is really no need to show up again in the morning to watch us packing and launching! Thanks for our privacy.