We started
the morning by looking for some Eriosyce (Thelocephala) on the nearby
hillside - Gustavo seemed to smell them from hundreds of meters away, while we
had difficulty spotting them right in front of us.
Once the early morning dew had
evaporated and our tents were dry enough to pack, we made for the Tigrillo
Valley, the next valley north of Guanillos (S080).
The Copiapoa here were still C. longistaminea, but different from
the plants in the Guanillos Valley. This is the form that Karl Knize called
C. trigrilensis.
Once again,
many of the stems had a dark, corky base to the stem. We had seen this on other
Copiapoa and were to see it again, particularly prominent on C.
cinerea subsp. columna-alba. Raquel Pinto suggested that this was an
organism called 'Nostoc', a cyanobacterium that grows on (and inside?) the
spines and the epidermis of the plants.
We drove
inland and found a valley with lots of small C. columna-alba (S081),
growing alongside two different Eriosyce (Neoporteria) sp. and, on a
flat, another small Copiapoa sp. growing pulled down into the gravel and
dust Were these plants, with a narrow neck connecting the body to a large
taproot, C. grandiflora?
Further
inland still, in a wide, flat valley (S082)
we found more plant that, from my notes, we IDed as C. grandiflora -
single headed plants, pulled into the ground.
Marlon and I
hitched a lift with Gustavo, back to Secret Valley and on, up a steep cliff
track, to Las Lomitas (S083),
a high cliff fog zone at the northern end of the Parque Nacional Pan de Azucar
that offers spectacular views over the Pacific Ocean and the Esmeralda Valley -
if it had not been for the fog. So instead, we focussed our cameras on objects
closer to the lens: at guanacos and small desert foxes in a landscape dominated
by Eulychnia, Echinopsis (Trichocereus) and low shrubs, all covered in
lichen. We did not stay long, as we would be back with the rest of the party.
On the way to
Chañaral, we made one more stop (S084),
inside the National Park, at Playa Blanco, to take some pictures of the
Copiapoa cinarescens, growing along the track.
At the
Hosteria in Chañaral, we met up with two more Chileans with whom I had enjoyed
email correspondence prior to the trip: Ricardo Keim and Ingrid Schaub and
discussed our plans for the next few days.
