San Jose del Faro to Punta Blanco, August 21st 2011.


I launched with the Sun. This makes afternoons easier but I cannot see or photograph the coastline in the early morning glare. Starting with San Jose del Faro, the coastline is one south facing point after another with big curves of protected sandy beach behind each point. I think this is the area mentioned in “We Survived Yesterday” as the most beautiful in the whole cost. If you like sandy beaches I guess. Actually many of these beaches had sandy bottoms (easy landing, spilling waves) and gravel berms above (good camping). I saw many places I would not mind stopping at.

Another pod of dolphins followed me for a few hours today. I could see them in the large waves between me and the sandy beaches! I saw what looked like a large whale skeleton on a beach, so I landed on the other side of the point to hike over and photograph it. When I got there it turned out to be a long line of white bags full of beach rocks ready to be exported to upscale garden supply stores in the USA. My camera battery suddenly ran out, so it turned out to be fortunate I was on dry land and could get the spares out and the camera charged up again. This was the only time on the whole trip that I had lunch on dry land.

When I rounded the last point of the day I saw a row of layered, eroded, overhanging cliffs. I lingered along this taking pictures. On the east end of this was the start of another sandy beach. A road, a few campers, a few shacks. I turned back to a pocket beach I had seen between the cliffs. Sand to land on, a gravel bern to camp on, shade in the afternoon, fossils in the layers of the cliff! The perfect campsite. But windy. At 6:00 PM I lied down inside the tent to wait for the wind to die down enough to cook dinner. Then I woke up at 9:00 PM to no wind but pitch dark. I decided to skip dinner.


All text and images Copyright © 2011 by Mike Higgins / contact