Eventually,
we were all showered and ready to go. First stop was a vulcanizion where for
the equivalent of £ 1.50 (c. US$ 2) the tyre was fixed, the valve changed and
the spare wheel swapped back for the original, so that we had matching sets of
tyres.
Along this
part of the Chilean coast, access to the rocky shore line is rather limited as
land has been fenced off in preparation for sale and building of some very
nice weekend retreats for the better off Santiago workers. While this
urbanisation does have an impact on nature - we were able to see this already
in Pichidangui - the pressures of people in search of better housing, even
only as a break for daily city life is irresistible. It would be wrong for us
to criticize this situation, as we had been quite happy to make use of the
facilities at Hotel Kon-Tiki, which previously would have been nice cactus
habitation.
The next
opportunity to see what could be found at the coast came at Punta Totoralillo
(S002 from 2001, S109 this time), some 15 km up the coast.
During my previous visit, signs of tourism, encouraging housing development,
were already to be found, but now more sections of the coast were fenced off
and a few summer houses had been built. The same mix of cacti and
succulents that we had seen at Pichidangui were to be found, but with easier
access from the bottom of the rocks rather than from the top.
S110 was an unscheduled
stop at a petrol station off Ruta 5. While the cars were being fuelled, toilet
breaks were taken and legs stretched. This last exercise took us to a barbed
wire fence, no doubt put up to stop passers by from falling into a dry gully.
Here we found some very fit Eulychnia and Trichocereus and all
of us were persuaded to get our cameras from the car by a nice crested plant.
Hence this was entered into my Stop list. Sequential Stop numbers were
allocated to each place where we stopped to take pictures of cacti.
Next we
pushed on until we reached the turn off to Parque Nacional Bosque de Fray
Jorge. In 2001 we had learned that during the winter season, these parks
were only open during the weekend, so on this Thursday, we made three stops (S111,
S112 and S113) along the road up to the park entrance gate, which
in 2001 had been chained off. However, this time it was open and we made our
way to the Ranger Station to make some enquiries. We were assured that the
park would still be open on 26 June when we were due to pass by on the way
home. We decided against camping this time as we had not bought provisions
(read beer, wine and bread rolls) for a night out. At the Ranger Station I was
able to take a picture of Copiapoa pendulina, a form of C.
coquimbana that is regarded as the most southern Copiapoa. This plant had
been moved to a small garden so that the people could recognise it later on
their walks through the extensive Park.
The stops
on the road in and out of Fray Jorge proved a treat in their own right, as we
found the only
Eulychnia plant (Eulychnia acida) on the whole trip that
was in flower. Various attempts were made at catching the flower, some 2.50 m
(8-9 foot) off the ground, on film. Time will tell if the slides I attempted
to take, hanging off the side of the car, are any good. In addition to the
ceroids (Eulychnia and Echinopsis (Trichocereus) skottsbergii).
other cacti included Cumulopuntia sphaerica although we still tended to
call it by Ritter's name Tephrocactus berteri and Eriosyce aurata,
the form previously going under Ritter's name Eriosyce ihotzkyanae or
Backeberg's E. ceratistes var. jorgensis. These plants were giant
barrels, to 88 cm tall and 50 cm in diameter. Some still had the
characteristic woolly fruits in abundance, while others were bear of fruit,
but with the plant's depressed apex full of seed, ready to be scooped up by
ants, mice and keen cactophiles.
Aware that
we still had some way to go before a hotel bed awaited us, we drove east to
Ovalle, making short stops to capture the best sunset of the entire trip on
film and digital camera. Ovalle turned out to be a typical Chilean town, with
some 53,000 inhabitants and a grid system roads where getting to the planned
hotel usually means driving twice around the Plaza before you have found the
one-way street that gets you closest. Hotel Roxy was no exception, with it's
neighbouring porn video shop probably helping to keep the price for
accommodation down. As often, behind the plain and unassuming entrance was a
nice courtyard leading to simple but clean rooms - a welcome bed for the
night.
Tomorrow we
drive east, up the Rio Grande valley.
