Heavens open up after walking a Whales Tail

We got up and had a quick breakfast before heading over to the Marino Ballena National Park. The main attraction of the park is the so-called “Whale Tail”, which is a small island connected to the mainland via a sandbank accessible only at low tide. We knew low tide was at about 8:30, so timed it appropriately. We first attempted to get to the park via directions from a travel guide book, which claimed that we just drive past flutterby house. Turns out THAT dirt road just leads to a dead end nowadays. We turned around and put our trust in google, only to get to the main entrance 10 minutes later. We expected the park to be a large beach and some jungle, but it really was a park of a large beach and some hectares of water going out into the ocean. We walked to the whales tail, which was quite a nice walk – you do have an eerie feeling of being surrounded by a beautiful tropical ocean on two sides.

Photo of the Map. You get to take it along. As a Photo.

Palm beach river shore thing

Small tidal river crossing

The endless beach

Simon considering endless beach

Simon walking endless beach

Amazing shore colours

More amazing shore landscape

Walking out onto the Whale Tail

View from the tail

Simon walking along the tail

Beautiful patterns left by retreating tides

More Beautiful patterns in the sand

After our visit, we spent some time in the shade of the palm trees, photographing a few ghost crabs and eagles chasing (and eating!) ghost crabs. It got a bit hot around noon, so we decided to hit a local cafe for some refreshing smoothies. As we got there it started absolutely bucketing down with rain, so we stayed for about an hour chatting and making plans for the next year. When the rain slowed a bit we dashed across the road to a shop which got our attention when we arrived, as it had a chillie as its logo 😋. We stopped for a snack of tacos and home-made chillie sauce. It was delicious and spicy! 🥵

Crab rolling mud ball

Rolley Rolley Rolley

Eagle going in for the kill. Note the crabs scattering in the front of the image

Carrying dirt out of the hole

Why you put a shell on my hole Hooman?

Racoon waz ‘ere!

Some beach rubbish arranged artistically

View from the shaded area

Tropical paradise!

Note the clouds rolling in

My eggs are not the solution, protect the turtles. Or something like that?

Plastic bottle bin… For plastic bottles!

Smoothies while waiting for the rain to stop

potato crisps with home-made chilly sauce. Would have bought if it was for sale!

Taco lunch

We were still in planning mode and the rain started up again, so we headed to our accommodations outdoor area to continue our planning, played darts and read some. As darkness set in we decided to head to a local restaurant recommended by another guest in a review. We walked down some unlit dirt roads to get there, but couldn’t find it. A helpful local pointed us to another restaurant, well, Soda. As we walked there we finally checked google, and the place was closed today. We probably walked right past it in the dark! We slowly made our way back to our accommodation, jumped into the car and hit the cafe we were at earlier because we noticed they had a nice food offering also. After a delicious meal we packed everything ready to move on tomorrow.