Pos: here
Loc: La Planchada
Acc: tent
Dist: 32,3 km
Start: 7:05 End: 13:45

Tomorrow:
Estimated landing: Caleta Puyenca
Estimated starting time: Right after sunrise
Estimated landing time: Well before sunset

Ahhh! What a feeling to sleep in, and especially in such a calm, quiet place! We just heard one of the boats, with the three men we met yesterday, going out at dawn, but we were not! My sleeping pad kept it’s air now after using hot glue, and no trashing surf or barking dog was annoying all night. We just had a very light rain for a short time which sounded relaxing.

When we slowly got ready for the day, one single guy showed up and got the other boat ready to go out. He emptied a few sacks with what I guessed was sand on a plastic tarp, but I later learned it must have been guano! He took those empty sacks plus a lot of nylon rope plus an inflated truck tire innner tube and left the caleta.

Later, about 10 km up the coast, we saw his boat floating in front of a beautiful big arch – where was the guy? Diving? Just by himself?

No, he was on top of the arch, collecting guano…I stayed and watched. Peter preferred to keep on floating outside the rocky area in calmer water. But he was missing something which turned out to be a most amazing performance of local skills and knowledge!

The seas in the rocky area where this single freestanding arch was located were quite high, the swell went up the rocks about two meters, plus the reflections made it nasty bumpy. In this water, his small nutshell of a boat was anchored just by itself, but a long nylon rope went high up on top of the arch which may have had a height of about 30 m, a width of maybe 40 m, and a thickness of about 10 m. The hole in the middle may have measured 10 m x 5 m.

I saw the guy walking high up on top of the arch with some heavy white sacks full of guano on his shoulders. He must have collected the stuff meanwhile since we saw him launching well before us! We already saw other guys in the rocks on shore doing this job, but never a single man in the middle of the ocean on a really high, fragile and scary looking arch! How will he get down to his about 10 m from the arch anchored and up and down bumping boat again, plus how will he get those heavy sacks down into the boat?

We saw the truck tire iner tube parked on a lower rock where he must have entered. When he was obviously done with his job of piling up the sacks on a certain spot in the middle of the arch, he started to climb down. This was all done in underpants and a faded t-shirt, barefoot. will he now swim to his boat? But I saw him rather now throwing the truck tire into the water attached to a rope, and on one high swell, he simply jumped on the tire on all fours, balancing in the bumpy water elegantly, all with a lit cigarette in his mouth…he must be sure he was not going to swim! 🙂

He paddled with some flat things in his hands he may have used to scrape off the guano from the rock toward his boat, climbed in, and didn’t seemed to get wet in any way. But what about his precious prey of sacks of guano?

He had tied the sacks on this long rope reaching to the boat beforehand in such a skillfull manner, that by now pulling on the rope a first set of three sacks were plunging about 30 m deep into the water. It seemed not to be too bad that the guano got wet at least for a few minutes. Then he already had hauled them up into his boat. Another hard pull, and like domino rocks the next three probably very heavy sacks were falling down and were again quickly pulled into the boat. The last three, and the job was almost done! He estimated the length of the rope perfectly, tied only three on one batch together with about a meter of rope in between, and left a good length of rope in between.

Now quickly the anchor lifted, a broad smile at my thumbs up, and the show was over! I was quite sure to have been the first gringa to watch this dangerous solo climb in the middle of the ocean…and he probably enjoyed to perform. If the rope would be breaking, or if he’d slip and fall with the heavy sacks…well…he seemed to  know what he was doing…

When we were passing the mouth of the Chuli river, the water colour changed to light green and it was a bit milky. The many hundreds of seals in that area were easy to spot in this water colour and obviously having a great feed and play! It was one of the best seal shows we had.

For some reason, seals sometimes like to play dolphin. Just by their at times sleek jumping movements, you couldn’t tell them apart. All done in a mass of dozens at one spot. Impressive! But they were not dolphins! They at some point were coming almost all together, curious about what kind of orcas we may be, chasing us in a pack of hundreds of seals, and making quite some fat splashes occasionally very close to the boats. We couldn’t stop watching…

The coast from last day’s long, long beach passing our last night’s caleta La Linca and up to this Chuli river was formed by heavy swell running up on the cliffs and creating a lot of deep caves, many arches and rock pillars. We slowly paddled along, and enjoyed watching nature’s spectacle! It was stunning.

Our destination was the small port of Planchada, where we were hoping to be able to disembark behind a clearly visible harbor wall. But it had only a steep landing wall with ladders and padded with car tires. It would be possible, but quite an effort for us to disembark in this way!

We rather opted to land on a real ugly shallow beach in front of an ugly industrial area, which had a bit of low to moderate surf…I landed first and paddled in high speed in on the back of a wave. Soon I was greeted by a bunch of the workers of this industrial place. I handed out a card, while I was watching the waves for Peter to wave him in. He decided to turn a circle when there were a few nasty big ones coming in. Once a lull showed up, I waved him to paddle in, but I think he started too far out, and didn’t paddle with all power at the beginning once he decided to go in – anyway, he caught a smaller wave from the backside, and somehow managed to more or less capsize on  a high brace. He got straight again, and a next wave did the same to him…Sure he was not happy, being now soaking wet, and all this in front of the eyes of about ten spectators, and he lost his cap in the surf…

It was all my fault, having waved him in on the wrong timing… but yes, I remember having reminded him last time in Arequipa’s shopping mall to buy a spare cap…and I tied it to him with strap and a small carabiner already on the first days of our trip… but he decided to become lazy on the easy seas and not to clip the carabiner any more to his shirt or jacket…and now his one and only cap is gone in this low surf with this not really necessary high brace capsize…very sorry he has now to use one of my spare visors to have at least a bit of shade on his eyes while paddling…but he can additionally use his shirt hood to cover from the sun.

Our campsite in front of the wall of the industrial area, on a beach with an open stinky gray water ditch and some dubious pipelines running into the sea close by is not really as romantic as it was last night, but it does the job…