We loaded them up, which was also easier than expected (I secretly feared this was due to how many things we were forgetting once again) then Tincho waved good-bye and we paddled off into a calm sea. Out on the water, the light breeze and cool water felt good.
We stopped for lunch a couple of calm hours in. A lone little penguin was there, drying himself. He stared at us, trying to decide if we were enough of a threat to warrant him getting himself all wet again, but then he just stayed and kept grooming himself while I took pictures.
The beach itself was beautiful, and with the morning's activity and lunch and warm sun, we lay down to rest a while. I am amazed at how easily Julio goes to sleep just about anywhere. And as the wind often does, it picked up in the afternoon. What was not so usual however, is that the city of Puerto Madryn, which was still pretty close, entirely disappeared under the sand the wind picked up. We could see it all heading our way, there were even little wind whirls on the very water, full of sand, I'd never seen that before. Julio decided we'd have to wait it out, there was no way kayaking into that would be fun. So we waited, and took a short walk up the cliff to see how things looked on the other side of the next curve.
Julio went further than I did (I, of course, was delayed by my habit of taking pictures) and reported increasing waves and strong winds on the other side too. So we waited some more. Worst case scenario, we could also camp here, but it would be too bad to have kayaked so little.
In the late afternoon, the wind storm was over and we were able to get back in. The wind had, of course, produced huge waves, and was still blowing at our backs, which made our traveling go very quickly, we barely had to paddle at all to keep going forward. At one point Julio said we should stop, because there was no way we could cover the same distance in reverse if we had to fight a front wind, which was likely on our way back. We decided to go to the next bend and see if we found a suitable place, meaning a beach (there are more cliffs than beaches here, and we can't even get ourselves up those, much less the kayaks) made of sand and small pebbles with no big rocks to injure ourselves or damage the kayaks.
There were a couple, but they were unappealing, so we turned around to go back to the last spot we'd liked. And holy cow, this is when we started working! I had to paddle full strength and barely went forward at all, Julio was soon far ahead of me, scouting, and I followed with all my might. I am sure it lasted less than a half hour, but I felt like I'd raced once we got to our camp site. Whooah! I was gasping for air, but feeling exhilarated by the physical exertion.
We changed. I was glad for the warm clothes I'd brought, but Julio had neglected to bring either pants or a jacket, so he felt a bit chilled. I gave him a vest of mine and laughed at how ill if fitted.
The place was beautiful, and while setting up camp, we kept an eye out for where we knew the moon would rise from. It was going to be full tonight.
A few clouds on the horizon kept us from being able to see the beginning of the moon rise, but then we saw it above the clouds, and it was a magical sight. We cooked and ate while looking at it and taking pictures. It was so amazingly bright that we never even needed our headlamps. I am not sure whether it ever happened before that I recall, but this moon actually gave us shadows.
Of course, a full moon also means very high tides, so we made extra sure that the kayaks couldn't take off during the night. The cold finally drove us to our sleeping bags, and it was a fairly peaceful night, although the wind never did die down entirely.
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