Pos: here
Loc: Chimbote
Acc: tent
Dist: 70,1 km
Start: 5:20 End: 18:15

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

A long, but quite pleasant paddling day to Chimbote city beach just to pick water…but we were well rested from yesterday’s half day paddle only, and were highly motivated to squeeze the 70 km out of the just about 13 hours of daylight. It worked!

I will write more tomorrow, too late now, sorry…

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What a nice restful and peaceful night! Just the moon shone so bright I covered my eyes with my scarf…

We got up early, to make the most out of the long day’s paddle to Chimbote. We knew with a bit of good following wind we could just about make 70 km in daylight. If we may arrive in the city at night, this should also work well, a it should all be well lit there and having dead calm water at the beach.

For some reason, we had a “race” of small fishing boats coming the other way on the first hours, maybe 30 small boats were heading south. One after the other. Did they all come all the way from Chimbote?? And is the fishing around Punta Huaro so great they all need to go there?

We felt strong and powerful paddling today, good to cover the long distance. I was mourning a bit not to go into Playa Dorado on the rocky hammerhead headland before Chimbote, as this beach was looking really special and calm enough to land in today’s conditions. But we rather would love to shop for water this night!

We were turning through a gap in the islands around the headland into the calm bay before Chimbote with a very strong wind in the back. It was probably 25-30 knots, and felt quite ugly despite the low sea. But we were pushed nicely to the city, and could already spot the wall of anchored fishing boats upfront the beach! It was quite an impressive sight of the surpassingly largest fishery fleet in Peru. Still I liked Pucasana better…

We were landing easily on a very dirty city beach, which tried to look fancy on the promenade with a few new sails for shadow, arches and pavilions. Just about 500 m down the beach was the fishing jetty where the trading was on.

Peter got quickly changed for going shopping for water and a few goodies, while I was making camp just close to the high wall boarding the beach to the promenade. At least we were not visible from the street in this way. Just a few curious onlookers had a quick view from the top, but one very curious guy was watching Peter changing and me making camp for almost an hour, leaning almost besides our tent. I made a bit “conversation”, and at some point said “permiso, banyo privado” when I eventually wanted to change my wet clothing. But he pretended to like to wait for Peter coming back and to be my temporary “watch man”. As Peter took a while longer, I simply started to have my shower in the shelter of the wall and the tent, barely turned around, top first then bottom. Who cares…eventually he walked off. Did I scare him away? 🙂

The only thing I just didn’t really appreciate was the smell on this beach and the trash around. It looked like they occasionally do clean it,  matching the reasonable clean and reasonable fancy promanade, but it must have be longer time ago…