Selvagem Pequena

Next morning, after a reasonably quiet night at the exposed anchorage, we picked up Frank and Buffy for a day trip to the even remoter and much smaller island of Selvagem Pequena. While the wind was still light, the big ocean swell seemed to have picked up and the breakers over the reefs looked frightening. While at Grande the dinghy landing is quite sheltered with a good concrete ramp, landing on Pequena is a completely different story. Luckily we had the experts with us, who told us that the only spot to land a dinghy is far from the only spot where you can reasonably safely anchor a yacht. One of the pictures shows the breakers inside of Taniwani anchorage and it is quite obvious what would happen, should you attempt to land anywhere near the eastern end of the island.

Guided by our experts, we had a wild dinghy ride of at least one mile, around rocks and reefs, surfing on serious surge, all the way to the western end of the little island. There one finds a little sand beach, divided in half by a big rock. The right half of the beach is also the 'official' landing place of the park wardens who keep their little boat there and from there a short path leads to their tiny house.

The two wardens, who had just started their three week turn, quickly came to the beach and helped us bringing the dinghy ashore.

Pequena is even remoter and even more authentic and unspoiled, with a number of plants only known to grow on that island. After, unfortunately not successful, trying to make the pay TV box in warden hut work, we started for an extensive guided tour of the little island. We climbed its peak with light at 49m and then strolled along the beach line all the way back to the landing place. A fantastic and extremely interesting tour. A really mystical place.

We took off just in time to not arrive in darkness at Selvagem Grande which is 10 miles to the Northeast from Pequena.