Warm
and rested after a good night's sleep, we woke up to a spectacular
sun rise over the coastal hills. We felt sorry for our friends who had
elected to stay the night at Fray Jorge and imagined all sorts of
negatives that they might have encountered - perhaps we were a bit
jealous about what we might have missed out on. Such thoughts were
soon forgotten when a member of the hotel staff knocked on the door to
serve our breakfast in our rooms. We moved a table from our room on to
the terrace and invited Anne and Benjy over with their breakfast trays
to join us.
Next
it was off, a mere hundred yards or so, to the end of the coast road,
where at the start of our trip we had had our puncture. Here (S210),
on the flat soil right between the road and the cliffs, grows another
Eriosyce, E. curvispina. Again we were amazed to see how much
bigger the plants had become during the previous three weeks. Last
time they had been shrunk down, level with the soil. Now most looked
'pumped up' and were competing with grass for light. Cameras duly
clicked and these, plus the plants seen earlier, were photographed so
that we could compare conditions with those earlier ones.
Having
found a similar habitat some 12 km further north, at Totoralillo
(S109), at the start of our trip, we decided to take a look a bit
further south, at Los Molles. Unfamiliarity with the toll system on
Ruta 5 resulted in having to pay the full toll for the next stretch
south, even though we left the road at the next turn-off, only some 8
km along. We also had to pay the same amount later, on the way back!
Fortunately, the amounts involved are reasonable. Los Molles turned
out to be disappointing, as once again, most access to the coast was
fenced off with housing development in full flow. The opportunity to
look around here had not been planned and so had not been part of our
study of very detailed maps before hand. I'm sure that with better
preparation we would have faired better.
Looking
at the maps in the Turistel Norte booklet, we decided to see what we
could see inland and found a road that followed the Rio Quilimari
valley. Not sure what to expect, we looked out for potential cactus
habitats amongst the agricultural development and made two stops (S211
and S212) between the villages of Quilimari and Guanguali, both gentle
south facing slopes along the track, over looking the river.
Echinopsis (Trichocereus) that looked as though they were on
steroids provided the initial motivation to stop, but once on foot we
found two different Eriosyce (Neoporteria) growing on the
slopes, sometimes sheltered by small shrubs or on the edge of gullies,
sometimes fully exposed in the open. One looked like plants labelled
Neoporteria horrida in our collections in the UK and probably on
the same medication as the Trichoes. A look at Kattermann's Eriosyce
book confirmed that this is a synonym of Eriosyce (Sect.
Horridocactus) curvispina var. mutabilis, found all around
Pichidangui. The other was much taller and more densely spined and
could be E. subgibbosa or E. chilensis. Kattermann tells
us that the two are indistinguishable when not in flower, so the
search for plants in flower was on - successfully - confirming that we
were looking at one of the seven subspecies or varieties of E.
subgibbosa, but I still have to check out the amendments to his
classification that were made since its publication in 1994.
We
were more than happy with our efforts, but with time on our hands,
drove further inland, more for a look at the scenery than in search
for cacti. It seemed that our appetite for finding cacti had mellowed
a bit as we were approaching the end of the trip.
