Pos: here
Loc: Punta Acertada
Acc: tent
Dist: 29,8m
Start: 11:15 End: 17:35

As the wind was changing over night to a strong 20 kn south westerly, and I was not keen to paddle against such wind *and* against the tide, especially not around a headland with again plenty of “tide rips” signs on my chart, I turned around again in my sleeping bag for another nap after my usual wake up time at 6 am.
It was as well forecasted the wind changes direction to east in the afternoon, so I may start around lunch, I thought.

Meantime, I made the short walk to visit Eduardo, who welcomed we yesterday so nicely on my arrival. He is really the one and only resident at Cabo Raso – now. Around 1800 something, a British ship landed a load of pioneers here in this bay, and about 100 (?) people were making a modest living in a couple of houses – which I now saw from the distance as ruins.

Most of them were still, actually, but for sure Eduardo’s house, plus two or three guest houses, were freshly made up – out of those “ruins”!
Eduardo is now hotelier, cook, barkeeper, shop owner, police man, handy man and whatever in this location – a multi talented guy! He is filling his guest houses and camp sites in summer time with some tourists, but stays all year round to work on the houses.
Since four years he is buying and refurbishing them – one after the other! And – Eduardo is one of the very few Argentines I’ve met who are *very* organized, clean and detail-loving in the things he is looking after – though having obviously not a huge amount of money to renovated those houses. But creativity and improvisation makes for a beautiful charming housing and guest house site.
If you ever like to have a nice private camping or guest house holiday on a very beautiful beach area – come and meet Eduardo at Cabo Raso! He will be very happy to be your host!

I was getting around to see all his facilities, and we were talking quite a bit in the nice sunny, but very windy day. He was talking Spanish with a few words English – I did the other way round – and it worked well! 🙂

But eventually I got nervous about the sunny day, and was checking more than once if the wind was about to go down already. Luckily at some point in our conversation Eduardo decided he needs to keep on working with his cement business he was just doing when I came up to him, and I decided to launch now.

The tide was changing at noon, and I was on the water at 11.15 h – just perfect to have the many tide rips around Cabo Raso almost dead at slack tide! And amazingly paddling the three km out of the bay ENE, the wind was still out of SW, but as soon as I was turning south, the wind changed – probably with the tide? – to an all afternoon lasting 15-20 kn NE – perfect timing!

The cape itself proved due to the tide timing not to be much of a challenge – it was quite flat on the land and on the sea, and bare of any wildlife – well, again, until I turned around the last corner!

There I encountered the largest sea lion colony I have met so far! It must have been about 1000 animals or even more… Soon I got nice company in the water while I was watching them and taking again endless pictures and videos!

One curious young sea lion after the other plus some older males as well liked to play “watch dog” with me, and they were playing around me and sticking their heads out to have a look – around and around, above and under the water. Eventually I felt I was in a pool of sea lions rather than in a pool of water! They were way many more than yesterday at Punta Atlas!

I think probably 100 or so were swimming, still leaving an indifferent mass of sea lion bodies lying on the rocks in the bright sunshine! This is real “wild life”!

They became quite naughty, being so many in the water and fighting for the best spot close to my kayak to watch me. I got some wet splashes on a fast diving movements, a few unintentional hits on the kayak from fast fins, and one youngster dared to bark nastily at me…well, this was my sign to leave then…bye bye guys! It was a pleasure to float among you!

In those moments I’m feeling incredible privileged, being able to encounter the wild life so close directly from my kayak! What did I not see already on this trip so close by – hundreds of whales, dolphins, sea lions, elephant seals, penguins, thousands of sea birds of different species and guanacos on land – now I know they were guanacos. And they are not really edible, Eduardo told me…

After rounding such spectacular headlands I’m not really feeling like crossing over directly to the next one across open water – this would have been 20 km to Punta Acertada.

No, I really felt like hugging the coast again, and found a few very narrow rock harbors leading into lake-like calm areas – always occupied by a single pair of ducks! Cute…

I was landing on the smallest sandy beach of the day in a narrow rock gully, and had to back out again to be free! Almost like paddling into a cave…which I also saw two or three of. But not to paddle in to – too rough at those entrances!

Eventually, the wind increased more and more in strength, but leaving only some larger white caps on the still calm sea. But when the remaining distance to cross over to Punta Acertada was only 8 km, I couldn’t resist the attraction of the headland and gave it a go across – the rest of the large bay didn’t seem to be that interesting.

Punta Acertada, quite rough choppy seas to go round now, had a few of the usual sea lion colonies, but nothing which could top the one at Cabo Raso!

I kept on paddling around the cape, determined to find where the next beautiful beach was for my night’s camp today. I could have easily made another head land, as Punta Roja was only 8 km across again, but I had enough impressions for the day and rather liked to climb one of those quite high rocky mountains which surround the bays.

The first narrow bay I was paddling in had a nice small sandy beach on low tide, but higher up it was very ugly rocky – apart from the hut which was teasing me to check out! It was a solid concrete hut on poles high over the beach –   not really a ruin but probably erected in the times of the lighthouse for rescue or such – can’t imagine any one has been living here!

It was not my place to stay tonight. The beach was not worth it either, so I jumped in my kayak again, backed out, and felt my rudder was stuck…well, a quick jump in the water is already nothing special any more in my dry suit…

Rounding the very next small headland, I had to paddle about 500m inland north again to land to find “my” gravel beach for the night, which was quite a job in now probably 25 kn headwinds – though flat water! The sandy beaches seemed to be a thing of the pasy at Bahia Cruz…

But my bay was one of the finest – if there wouldn’t be about 20 plastic fish boxes scattered around the bay – this bay must be the floating trap of the whole area! But there was very little other floating rubbish lying around Or did they came by land? There was a wheel track leading up to the lighthouse, but I couldn’t see much of a track going to this beach – just animal tracks…guanacos or simply sheep.

Climbing up the highest mountain behind my campsite, I had a fantastic view backward and forward over the whole bay area – I could see as far as Cabo Dos Bahias behind Camarones! Not many signs of people here – apart from the lighthouse!

I disturbed two groups of about 20 each of those very woolly sheep – I’m wondering if they are really wild, or if an Estancia owner looks after them here…

Repairing a tiny hole in a foot of my dry suit was the last chore of the day – besides writing this…