Puerto Alcatraz
~ March 8-9, 2019~
So as I mentioned we sailed past the shelter of Puerto Alcatraz only to come back a couple hours later - against wind and current and in the dark, because Puerto Cortez turned out to be a bit too rough.
Finding a spot to anchor in the dark with poor chart information and a spot light is never a fun experience, but when we awoke in the morning we found ourselves in a beautiful spot.
In the afternoon when the wind had dropped out we headed ashore to explore. The town is another fishing village, and is a little bigger than Puerto Magdalena. We pulled the dinghy ashore between the Pangas, a cautious head up for an explore.
We are always cautious in town like this because of dogs. This was unnecessary, the people were super friendly. The people were mostly elderly, but they directed us to their 2 little stores which are basically rooms in peoples houses. We were able to get some long life milk, eggs and limes. We are certainly getting better at asking for things and working out the price. Whilst we probably have worse vocabulary than a 4 year old, the locals certainly seem to appreciate our effort.
We did have a conversation with an elderly fisherman who was very proud of his town. We really regret our inability to converse and it is something we will improve.
Along the shorefront there were ruins of what must have been old canneries. We gathered that the seafood now was taken to San Carlos for processing. There were also a lot of sea shells piled around the ruins, obviously part of the bounty that keeps the town alive collected from Clam Bay.
On the way back to the boat we landed on the beach on the other side of the bay to explore the other ruins and maybe find a few seashells.
It was a great place to explore. It seems super odd that these structures a completely abandoned and not even used for houses. If you look closely you can see some osprey flying in the wind.
So we gather someone was either very hungry or these are cans left from the cannery process.
We also found the super cool steal boat on the land just behind the ruins.
Whilst we had hoped to explore the Navy Base of Puerto Cortez today, we had an amazing day a here, finished off by this amazing sunset.
