With participants dispersed in various hotels, the standard instruction for each days adventures were simple: 'Meet at eight at the Copec'. This was shorthand for 'Estaciones de Servicio de Compañía de Petróleos de Chile' and every town seemed to have one. Later we tuned this to ' See you at the Copec in time to LEAVE at eight', as a whole group of people, fuelling cars, taking money from the cash machines and purchasing food and drink for the day can add significantly to the eventual departure time.

Our group had grown again, as Jorge Guerrero, from Vallenar, joined with his (empty) people carrier. I must get to 'Spanish for Beginners' CDs out, as I was frustrated by not being able to communicate with this gentleman in his own language in his own country without the help of others.

There were now 7 cars in the convoy as we headed north on Ruta 5, with Ingrid & Ricardo leading today's trip.   We stopped north of Canto del Agua, (S631), to look for Eriosyce aerocarpa, another one of those small cacti that we still referred to as Thelocephala. We'll have to come back one year when they're in flower or after some rain, as this time they must have been laughing at us as they remained hidden below the gritty, sandy desert crust. So it was just some pictures of very dry Copiapoa echinoides and Eulychnia for the album. But there were flowers! Cruckshanksia hymenodon, Rosita de la Cordillera (Little Mountain Rose), a plant that can be found in the perennial section of specialist Alpine Garden nurseries, was in full bloom.

We moved on, to S632, where we found Eriosyce napina ssp glabrescens (although we still knew these plants better as Thelocephala fulva) and a small bodied form of C. echinoides, tat Ingrid called 'Nana'. Ian gained a few more bruises down his arms and legs as Sarda discovered that he was the author of the statement 'I wish my wife was as dirty as this', written in the thick layer of dust that covered Rudolf's car.

We stopped again 10 minutes (S33) after passing through one of the hundreds of settlements named Totoral (or Totoralillo - little Totoral) that are scattered throughout Chile, everywhere where reeds are found. However, this is THE Totoral from Copiapoa literature, a small oasis (with reeds growing long the road) in the middle of a barren desert and found the form of C. echinoides that Ritter called 'cuprea'. Again, the plants were evidence that the area had enjoyed little or no moisture.

S634 was an opportunity to take pictures of cacti with the Pacific Ocean as a (distant) back ground. C. echinoides was this time accompanied by what Ricardo believes to be a transitional form between Eriosyce napina ssp glabrescens and E. odieri. Once again they were shrunken back into the ground, so impossible to pose for their own sea-side postcard picture.

On the way to the next stop, I had my picture taken next  to a sign warning motorists of guanacos crossing the road. The amount of 'road side furniture' seems a little over the top as apart from our seven car convoy, I believe we saw no other vehicles all day. The next sign, warning of cacti, was even funnier. Why place it here? Cacti occurred everywhere and we could recommend a thousand and one spots more deserving of signage.

At S635, and the near by S636, my notes say that we found C. megarhiza ssp echinata and C. megarhiza var borealis, but I can't tell in my pictures which are and 'borealis' does not appear in the New Cactus Lexicon, so perhaps they have a point.  Then again, the plants looked so dry that there were no clear points from which to ID the plants, they were just spiney balls, so that Rudolf's comments about spine alignment and rib form were noted but not observed.

The last stop of the day (S637) had been given the name 'The Turtle' by Ingrid. In previous correspondence, I had assumed that this name referred to the near by Moro Copiapó - in 2006 I had taken a picture of the silhouette of this hill that, with imagination, resembled a Turtle. Ingrid's name however referred to a large rock that, with a good deal less imagination, resembled a different Turtle. It was the home of yet another 'Thelocephala', Neochilenia monte-amargensis, now Eriosyce odieri ssp odieri and a sprawling, procumbent specimen of Eulychnia breviflora.

We arrived at Bahia Inglesa, named in memory of English corsair, Edward David, whose ship reached its coast in 1687, where we had last stayed in the impressive Hotel Rocas de Bahia in 2003, when a leaky swimming pool made life on the second floor a little uncomfortable. This time, Rudolf had done an excellent job by booking a whole row of cabañas at the near by Playa Blanca. Here the group grew again, as Bart & Marijke Hensel, participants in 2004 and 2006 Copiapoathons joined us.