A few kilometers into our day we stopped at a beach that would have been a nice campground if we weren’t on our way out. We marked that on the map for future trips. Our goal for the day was a fishing village only ten kilometers away. When we got to this village it looked so skuzzy and the water looked so calm that we kept going. There was a possible landing spot 20 kilometers into our day at a place called Ensenada Blanca and we headed for that. But when we found it the beach was made of large cobble stones. Half of these stones were covered with barnacles to scratch up the boats, and the other half were covered with seaweed to slip on and break our ankles. We pushed on to the next and the next spot, looking for a good landing. Eventually we had to travel 26 kilometers to get to a good landing beach. Behind the gravel on this nice beach we found a dry wash with white sand on it and set up tents as the sun set.
Tire tracks in the sand testified to someone making it to this beach through the mountains in a 4x4 vehicle. This made me think about my brothers who might like to drive in here some day. I’d like to convince them to bring me and a few kayaks along.
We hauled the heavy boats up the beach to get above the four meter tides and had an instant freeze dried dinner in the dark. After dinner a log behind the stove started buzzing. It was so high pitched and so continuous that I was convinced it was a cicada or some other insect. Other people thought it might be a rattlesnake. I kicked the log with my sandal-covered foot and rocked it with my bare hand without any change in the sound. Then someone pointed a flashlight under the log and verified that it was a rattlesnake! We left it there but everyone was a little nervous and zipped their tents securely closed on the way to bed.