Planning
these trips is an integral part of the enjoyment I get from them, as
is sharing my notes here after wards. However, the value of the
planning lies in being able to judge the impact of any changes that
you want or need to make once you've hit the road. The plan was to
spend the next night in Copiapó. The plan was changed over breakfast,
to spend the night in Chañaral instead and so give us more time in the
Pan de Azucar National Park the next day, as Angie was keen to see her
favourites - C. columna-alba.
And so we left Vallenar,
by the northern road - and almost immediately resolved yesterday's
mystery of how to get on the road to Alto del Carmen and beyond: by
taking the turning 3 km north of the Vallenar - North exit; well sign
posted and (as far as we could see) now a good tarmac road. Info noted
for Copiapoathon 2007 planning.
First stop of the day,
S531, was at km 22 on the track from Ruta 5 to Totoral. This was a
location given to me by Dutchman Evert Smienk in 2002 for a Copiapoa
that he thought looked 'different'. In 2004 we found the plant in the
pictures that he had sent me, but found a number of C. echinoides
growing all around. Closer examination showed that the unusual
appearance of the plant was due to the stem sacrifice of what had been
a respectable clump that had left one central, elongated stem in tact,
at least in 2004. By now, this stem too had died.
When Roger Ferryman saw
the picture, he immediately recognised the hill in the back ground as
the type locality of Eriosyce (Thelocephala) fulva. Our visit
this time was more to see if we could find any of these plants, but
despite a detailed 2 hour search, none were seen. This does not mean
that the plants do not grow there - just that we could not find any -
these plants are experts at playing hide & seek! As we drove back to
Ruta 5, there were at least 2 more rocky outcrops that matched the
outline of the hill at km 22, so it could be that Roger had made a
mistake in identifying the km 22 hill as the type location. When I
later discussed this with Juan, he confirmed seeing E. fulva
much nearer to Totoral.
Very close to our
departure from the UK, we received copies of Rudolf Schulz's Copiapoa
2006 book - an excellent read as expected with lots of great images.
It included a section (page 142) on Copiapoa humilis
ssp longispina, a taxon that had so far escaped me and that had
been the subject of discussions when Rudolf and I visited Paul Hoxey
in Cambridge in June this year. Could Rudolf provide me with the
GPS? We have unwritten gentlemen's agreements about such things and
Rudolf replied that the GPS data had been provided by Ricardo Keim (as
had the pictures in Rudolf's book) with the understanding that this
data would not be passed on by Rudolf. I asked Ricardo the same
question and immediately received the data by return, but with the
same understanding. We had time for two stabs, with pictures recorded
as S532 and S533. I'm more accustomed to pressing the button to record
the location of a particular spot, then to use the GPS to get me to a
particular set of co-ordinates and now was not the time to get out the
manual to see if and how my elderly machine could do this. Angie had
bought a simple GPS a few weeks earlier and later on the trip managed
to do all this with just a quick glance at the manual, so I guess that
I'll be upgrading my trusted 'brick' before 2007. (No doubt resulting
in more battery chargers and power supplies). My camera (Nikon D200)
has the ability to record the GPS data as part of the EXIF meta data
that is included with digital images, so it will be an opportunity to
get a compatible GPS. That'll just leave the GBP 100 (US$200) cable
required to connect the GPS to the camera - IF you can get the cable
which seems to be in incredible short supply. But I digress.
As we walked around
S532
I got a feel for how the distances walked affected the numbers on the
GPS. We checked data with the cache of Google Earth on the laptop and
this, plus the fact that we failed to find any plants confirmed that
we were near, but still not at the right spot. We moved the car as
near as possible and decided that this would be the last attempt on
this occasion - S533. We walked / climbed a couple of km up the hill
side that was steeper than expected and harder, in the mid day heat.
Add Dutchman and German woman to 'Mad dogs & Englishmen' as creatures
that go out in the mid day sun! We started to find dead plants,
just shells of blackened spines with the plant body and epidermis
gone. Where there are dead plants, the life ones can not be far away
and so we carried on looking. Eventually I found 2-3 plants, hidden in
cracks in the rocks and sufficiently out of shape to make a positive
ID impossible, perhaps these were Eriosyce and not the sought
for Copiapoa. No doubt I'll know by the time that these reports
go on to the website together with the pictures.
Doing a comfortable 120
km p. hr (70 mph) on Ruta 5, we soon reached Copiapó, which now also
has its large Supermarcado, very easily accessed from the Pan Am when
driving north. As we progressed towards Caldera, we looked to the
south where in 2004 the desert had been in bloom and we found
rare geophytic Euphorbia. No signs of such an event this time. We
passed Caldera, in the knowledge that we'd be spending two nights here
on the way back and reached an other regular stop:
S534 'The Monument',
where we found the usual C. calderana var spinosior without any
problems. We seemed to find more plants than in previous years, but
most seemed smaller; or did I pick a different track among the rocks
this time? The small Eriosyce, seen in 2001, could not be
found.
And so we booked into the
Hosteria Chañaral, another regular overnight stop, not because of its
high standards, but just because it is a convenient launch pad for the
Pan de Azucar National Park the next day.
As we would be sleeping
in Secret Valley the next night, we did our usual shopping in the
local super market - no, Lider had not yet gotten this far! My height
(194 cm / 6ft 4") and Angie's Germanic blonde hair still seem to
attract some attention in South America and one of the lady shop
assistants seemed to be cracking a joke with her friends about my
height. I turned the tables by walking up behind her and stretching to
my full height, much to her embarrassment and the great amusement of
her friends.
