Those
readers eager to read more about our cactus exploits will have to wait
another day. Today we made just two stops: a touristy one in the small
village of Toconao S555, where the usual souvenirs are about half the
price of those in San Pedro and where the lady in the shop on the
corner of the Plaza actually remembered me from 2004! 'How is the
llama?' I asked through Juan as interpreter. In 2004 I had run the
risk of offending the lady by asking if some of the goods were 'made
in China'. She had taken me through the house to the back yard where a
young llama was kept in a small pen. She smiled and explained in a
flood of Spanish that I was unable to follow, that it had gotten too
big for domestic use, so had been released into the wild, which I
interpreted as 'having been sent for a visit to the butcher.' I
bought a poncho made out of llama wool, to go with my leather hat that
has now accompanied me on 4 trips, so that back in England I can
attend fancy dress parties a Clint Eastwood's spaghetti western's
character.
There were three five
foot tall Echinopsis (Trichocereus) atacamensis growing in the plaza,
so at least we managed to take one or two cactus pictures while a film
crew for the local regional television station was shooting a film
consisting of three little girls dressed in very warm looking school
uniforms, walking from the church into the plaza singing Christmas
carols in the blazing sunshine. It all made for a very unreal scene
for a European gringo.
For
S556 we had moved on
to the near by Los Flamingos National Reserve. In 2004 we had driven
through the Salar de Atacame, a huge salt lake, in search of these
birds, but without success. Juan & Florencia once again proved the
benefit of speaking the local language as they asked where we would
have the best chance of seeing these birds. We were given directions
to the Laguna Chaxa supports all three species of Chilean
flamingo. We were in luck! The flamingos were in and we were able to
get reasonably close to get some excellent pictures, thanks to the
18-200 mm lens. This proved particularly good when I managed to get a
series of shots of four birds taking off. I'm sure that audiences for
cactus talks back in the UK will be grateful for a bit of variation in
the hundreds of the usual cactus images that I fire relentlessly at
them.
