Spending
the night in the car seemed a good idea when we drew up plans in the
UK and still seemed quite practical after we had emptied a bottle of
Santa Rita's 120 around the Eulychnia bonfire (Can 2 people be
'around' a bonfire?), but by daylight today, we could not wait to get
going.
We took some pictures of
Secret Valley (S545) at sunrise before moving on to find a set of coordinates
that Rudolf had given me for a place that he had christened 'Confusion
Hill' in 2003. At 8 a.m. under a bleak cloudy sky, the area (S546) looked
quite desolate. Angie decided that she'd stay near (in) the car while
I went to take a look. Rudolf had named the hill because the Copiapoas
that he found here defied identification. My eyes are not very clever
under low light conditions and for a while I was really confused -
unable to find any cactus until I found some humilis / taltalensis
like plants, but it was not until I had found some plants with dead
flower remains that I even dared to suggest a genus for these plants.
Again there were quite a number of dead, 'just a ball of spines'
plants, impossible to identify. There were also a number of Eriosyce rodentiophila, easily recognised by the fluffy woolly buds
and the bird's nest like spination.
As we drove north,
towards Cifuncho, what had been a variably maintained narrow dirt
track turned into a wide and well maintained oil road - what exactly
is the stuff they spray on the road? There were trucks applying the
liquid as we used the track, so the car picked up a fair amount that
quickly got covered in dust. It would stick to the car until we
left it for collection at the airport, except the bits that rubbed off on to
our clothing as we moved in and out of the car. Clearly, the world
price of copper must have gone up, so that there was much
increased activity at Planta Las Luces.
Cifuncho itself had not
changed very much since 2004 and we made straight for the spot where
we found 'Benjy's plant' (S547). In 2003, Benjy struggled to
find for a while to find a very nice 6 headed plant that has since
become the most photographed cactus in Cifuncho. It was still there
but there were very few other plants, argued to be the northern most
C. longistaminea or simply referred to as 'sp. Cifuncho'. A
vulture was circling overhead and as we drove out of Cifuncho, three
of these ugly bald-headed birds were sitting on an empty oil barrel,
looking defiantly at us. Did they know something that we didn't?
We intended to take the coast road to Taltal, so
that I could check if the Copiapoa taltalensis ssp. desertorum were in
flower and determine the colour of the flowers this time. In October
2004 we had only seen clumps of reddish flowered plants, but this
represented only a third of the plants. Did they others flower at a
different time? With 'standard' Copiapoa yellow flowers? As Rudolf had
warned us in September, every few hundred meters, large signs along
the side of the road proclaimed: 'Recinto Militar - Area de Ejercicios
Armada de Chile PROHIBIDO EL ACESO' We did not need a degree in
Spanish to know that this was now exercise terrain for the Navy and
that we were not welcome. The signs appeared to apply to the land
either side of the road and not to the road itself. Living on
Salisbury Plain - the UK Land Forces exercise yard, we were used to
such signs and assumed that we could safely ignore them unless the red
'exercise in progress' flags were out and bullets were whistling
around our ears. We made a few stops anyway (S548) when we saw plants
in flower not too far from the road - all the same reddish tints that
we had noted in 2004. No yellow flowering plants found. Does any one
else have any information to share? Seen clumps of yellow
flowered Copiapoa here Yes / No. Which month?
S549 was a small caleta
that must be a favourite of shell eating couples with young infants.
'Amazing Holmes! How do you know?' 'Elementary, my dear Watson, just
look at the hundreds of empty shells and the even larger number of
used disposable nappies!' Growing on the rocks we found quite a
number of C. taltalensis. I used to like the old name C.
rupestris, as it reminded me to look on the rocks, as the name
suggests this is where it grows.
S550 was not a plant stop
- just a reference so that we could file some images of the new
improved Taltal to show our friends back home. We had heard good
reports about Hotel Mi Tampi, opposite the steam engine museum that we
had christened 'the Taltal Flyer' on previous visits, so decided to
spend the night there for a change.
We started to walk to
dinner at Club Taltal, when we spotted a white Citroen Berlingo van
pulling away from the beach. We knew that Juan and Florencia had such
a car, which they called Horridoauto in one of their pictures. Could
this be them? I risked looking like an idiot by jumping into the road,
waving at the car and calling out their names - I'm used to looking
like an idiot (according to my kids).
It was them! They were
forced to delay their departure from Santiago, so had missed us the
night before in Secret Valley. Never mind. We had a nice meal in Club
Taltal and cemented our friendship over a bottle of red wine (please
pardon the mixed metaphor). We would be travelling together until the
day before our departure from Chile and learned lots from each other.
