19th December Trewel – Comorardes

Today we are going to PuntaTonbo, a haven for Penguins. The chap who started the reserve came to this area in the early 1900’s and eventually bought this large area of land and dedicated it to Penguins who come here to breed. He has since died and it has now been passed over, I think to the state as, what we would call, a heritage site.
We were told it was pavement, good tarmac, all the way, well it is but that is to the gate, we now have a further 20 miles to go to get to the coast and the penguins. You can see how big this estate is, anyway, ripio, that’s loose gravel, it is.
We all arrive safely with Martin and I running through that same learning curve of how to ride on gravel, that we had both mastered 2 days previously. A small cafe, some loos and a ticket office, 3 times as much for tourists as it is for nationals.
We started our wald keenly looking out for penguins and there are literally thousands, this is apparently home to half a million of them. Some have build nest right next to the permitted path and many cross over in front and behind us, and certainly most of them are not bothered by our presence. Having walked about 2k we can now see some of them by the waters edge and in the sea.
On reading some of the info here we see that when hatched and most were by now they will leave here and travel 6000k to Brazil and then return for breading in October. They will swim up to 600k for food and dive to a depth of 12 metres each dive lasting about a minute. So earlier I was going to say, enjoying there easy lifestyle, swimming and playing, but perhaps it is not that easy!
We pop into the cafe and have ‘enchaladas’ which are like a small Cornish pasty, Martin and I have 1 each, Fank is hungry so 2 of those and a spinach tart.
Now we leave and not only have the 20k to the gate on ripio, but we have 100 miles of ripio all the way to Comorades. We build our confidence again and pick up our speed, in fact it is a bit easier the quicker you go which is fine until you have a moment. well we had a couple of those, the first one we are happily making good headway and then round a corner is a grader, like a snow plough for roads, both Martin and I head for the side of the road where resides lots of sand, OMG, we stop and Marting takes a photo of the driver. I should mention here that we are about 70 miles in any direction from anywhere and there is this chap on this bit of plant at 5pm and we did not see any other vehicle, so he obviously had a bit to do. The second was where Martin suddenly tried to turn sharp right at about 50 or 60, then straightened up, then did it again and then once more just for luck. I was sure he was coming off the bike, I think he did too, but each time the front wheel gripped for him and he was able to recover. It looked so dramatic from where I was and I have the first 2 on video but by the time the last one came he was out of shot. The gravel forms heaps and troughs over time as cars drive through, this is fine for cars but on a bike you have to cross the furrows now and again and there will also be a build up in places, basically it is like driving with 2 punctured tyres. I will never complain about a gravel car park again!
We were not in Franks good books either by now. Franks had steamed off ahead and said he would stop from time to time, which was fine until we came to a fork and my sat nav was suggesting left and Martins right, after further investigation it seemed that i had an irrelevant waypoint along the route which is why we were different. So we went right and Frank had gone left, he stopped and had 3 cigarettes and decided that we had had an accident, gone wrong or some other disaster. He went all the way back to find us and ended up doing and extra 40 odd kilometres, by the time he arrived at the campsite we were already there, not impressed. Sorry Frank.
We pitched our tents and went to the local supermarket and cooked our first proper meal, jolly good it was too.