During my 2001 visit, we
spent a day each, travelling up the Elqui and Huasco river valleys. It was
interesting to see where the influence of the coastal climate, that appears to
be so important to Copiapoa, stops and similarly where other cacti are found.
Since then, looking at maps, I have been curious to see 'the next river valley
south', that of the Rio Los Molles / Rio Rapel / Rio Grande / Rio Limari river
system that passes by Ovalle and eventually passes by the south side of the
Fray Jorge National Park to empty into the Pacific Ocean.
The river waters warm
during their journey from the Andes to the ocean, where they meet the cold
Humboldt Current on its way north from the South Pole. As a result there
is a lot of fog that supports an original temperate rainforest that stands out
like an oasis in an otherwise barren area. This is the southern limit of the
Copiapoa distribution area.
As we drove up the
valley from Ovalle, Benjy and I once again observed how much greener the areas
we had travelled through so far had been, compared to 2001. That time, we had
travelled during May while this time we were travelling in June - the middle
of winter on the Southern Hemisphere. Obviously there had been a lot (?)
more moisture available to the vegetation (rain and / or fog?). The greenness
was even more noticeable here as irrigation has enabled agriculture to become
a major industry, with vines for the famous Pisco grapes as just one of the
crops.
Probably because of lack
of preparation on my part, probably due to lack of access to possible cactus
habitats due to agricultural development, but when we reached 'the end of the
road' - a (disused?) border control point in Central Los Molles, at an
altitude of 1074 m in the foothills of the Andes, we had only made one 'cactus
stop' (S114) and a number of photo-stops to capture the beautiful
scenery.
S114 was at Puente Los Angeles de Rapel,
a newly constructed bridge on a relatively new track that was not on our map.
The Trichocereus sp. (chiloensis?) was particularly nice with
large big stems in full growth, producing spectacular spines of up to 15 cm
(6") in length.
It can be quite
difficult to strike a balance between exploring for cacti and moving on to,
perhaps, more rewarding sites and the varying individual needs in a party of
eight to take enough pictures to remember this once-in-a-lifetime stop. It is
also easy to become absorbed in your search for plants and so to lose track of
time and of the distance that has still to be covered before reaching the
planned accommodation for the night. In order to keep some focus on the aims
of the day, I had brought a soccer referee's whistle that proved quite useful
to draw people back to the car. This time, the whistle was blown in vain as
Cliff failed to re-appear until eventually tracked down by Benjy. His
explorations had taken him a bit further and out of reach of the whistle's
sound. His efforts were rewarded by having found an Eriosyce aurata and
a Eriosyce (Neoporteria) sp. We'll have to wait until we see his slides
to see if we can provide a more educated guess for the precise name of these
plants.
Somewhat disappointed -
we had still not seen any Copiapoa in nature - we headed back and drove north
to La Serena, where on Benjy's recommendation we spent the night at Hotel
Costa Real, an excellent, luxurious hotel that we would visit again on the way
back.
Tomorrow we will see
our first Copiapoas!
