Pos: here
Loc: near Mar de Ajo
Acc: tent
Dist: 55 km
Start: 7:30 End: 17:45

The first “real” sea paddling day! What a relief. Not only that my hands tonight feel much better after a day soaked in saltwater and not sweet mud water, my soul felt free on the “real” ocean rather than on a river mouth or bay.

It was a lovely following breeze all day, with a great push the first third of the day. Easy going, with some nice rolling wind waves close to shore. The surf was nothing, as there is still no ocean swell (thank goodness…), just toppling wind waves breaking occasionally a bit nasty from the side.

I was passing all day those fancy sea bath places of Argentina, now completely out of season (it’s early spring here!), with windows shut everywhere. All look all like ghost towns…

The architecture ranged from more or less tasteful high rise buildings to small beach cottages. I’m just wondering where all those thousands of holidaymakers occupying those high rise buildings spend their day at the beach – as the beach is very narrow mostly, and on high tide almost gone…

I saw very few fishermen launching or landing their boats on the open shore, but amazingly still plenty of cars and motorbikes driving on the local”highway” up and down the beach.

Must be an international past time of local youngsters, as I had those guys in Australia en mass as well. As some of them spotted me tonight camping, the driving took some noisy excesses around my tent…hope they’ll be gone soon. But no worries…just kids.

Not much more to tell…maybe a word about my communication possibilities:

I’m not able to read every night all your encouraging comments on my blog or face book page, but may have emails on my cell phone quite frequently when there is phone reception – so please, if you are happy to meet me somewhere to offer me a place (with a hot shower…) to stay, or if there is something special to think of paddling your local piece of coast – please rather write an email than a comment which I can’t read (now).
If it is an urgent matter, please see my contacts on my website contact page. They may forward your message to my sat phone. Thanks!