Pos: here
Loc: Caleta Mejillones del Norte
Acc: tent
Dist: 45,1 km
Start: 7:35 End: 16:50

Tomorrow:
Estimated landing: 50 or 55 km further north
Estimated starting time: Right after sunrise
Estimated landing time: Well before sunset

It was Monica’s birthday today, and she got up at 6 am just to send us off! Happy birthday again, Monica, and I hope you’ll have a nice day despite our horribly early wish to leave! Thanks again to both of you for hosting us so nicely.

We packed our kayaks on a low jetty, slid them down into the water, and were gliding slowly away from the city into the “wilderness” – we thought…just accompanied by at least 10 fishing boats heading also north.

On the way, we found a new animals on this trip – an about 50 cm long turtle floating in the water without shying away as I was used to from the Australian turtles, being over a meter long! Coming closer, the turtle had her eyes wide open, but she seemed to be dead or close to getting there…poor girl…even a few barnacles were already on her shell. I didn’t expect turtles being already around here? there are still penguins around…

We were hoping to have our planned landing spot to ourselves with this caleta having no obvious road access, but not in South America…every little at least boat accessible spot has at least a hut, and this spot had even a small whole village! Despite there being no road access (I think…), there were about 50 people living here in about 20 shelters or huts or cheap tents – it never rains here, so why building more solid than necessary? Even a whole couch was standing outside a cave-like shelter with tarps…and many, many garbage piles, more or less burnt cans and bottles…we were camping on a garbage ash field.

Around 8 pm, they started at least three generators in each corner of the tarp village…f……noise…is there no sheltered landing with a bit of privacy and peace??? But they were all friendly people, they even offered us a bit of barbecue meat! But sorry, we already had dinner…