A cheeky squirrel woke me up this morning. It was in the tree above our tent doing it’s crazy little chatter/squeal (I don’t know how to describe it really). Ngaio was already awake as per usual, we went for a morning walk on the beach and we were stoked to see the waves had dropped so much over night. We were looking out to sea trying to assess the swell, when Ngaio spotted a coastal wolf trotting along the tide line. It was so awesome to see a wolf in its natural environment, picking along the tide line, I guess he was seeing if anything tasty had washed up.
I whipped off to grab my camera, when I got back Ngaio had spotted another, they were travelling in a pair. I think they got a whiff of us and they both trotted away, we followed their tracks and they had headed along the next beach and into the Forrest. We both felt pretty special to have seen them.
We headed back to camp and began to pack up. It felt like we were leaving home all over again! Our plan today was to paddle out of the bay, check what the open ocean was like then either land at a cove at the top of the bay or carry on down the coast if the conditions were good. The wind had dropped which was so nice.
We headed out off the beach, through some little waves which was exciting for Ngaio! As we made our way toward the coast we could see there was a big swell, we decided to paddle on and if we thought it was too much, turn back and land at the cove just out of San Josef Bay. The swell was pretty big, we were going ok, but it wasn’t fun. We had to paddle so far from the coast to be away from breaking waves, I decided to pull the pin and turn back. I had managed to have a good look at the coast and there were huge waves ripping into any spot we would want to land, the swell was big and we didn’t have enough daylight to make the 40km paddle to the next harbour. Plus, we are doing this for an adventure and for fun, and that was not fun!
Ngaio got to do her first surf landing which was cool. The tide was right in at the little cove so we went on a hunt to find a high dry spot for the tent. We saw a black bear at one end of the beach, we turned and walked the other way, until 1,2,3,4,5 black bears popped out of the bush and onto the beach! Three were cubs and two were big. Looked very much like shared accommodation with the bears again.
We found a spot for the tent, next to a little fresh water river. As we set up camp, the tide went out. We explored the rock pools for the afternoon, and enjoyed the sunshine that had finally decided to come out! Moroccan Style wild venison for dinner tonight, we feel like the luckiest campers in the world!
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(If the Brando and Ngaio Icon does not show up on the map click the menu then participant list then 'show all')
(first image and blog via satellite phone)