It would take the best part of a day to get back to Taltal. Cliff had swapped places in the car with Trevor and we set off soon after breakfast. We had planned a leg stretch at Baquedana (S676). It's only a small village, with some 500 inhabitants, stretched along Ruta 5. Every house seems to be a grocery shop or snack bar with trade provided by the constant flow of trucks, busses and cars that have to stop at the police control point just north of the town. At the height of the saltpetre days it was an important railroad crossroads and the town still has an extensive railway museum / graveyard.

It's usually difficult to find a curb side to pull up the car, but today it was easy. Most of the shops were closed. It seemed as though some work had been done to put in foundations to rebuilt some of the shop fronts, but the old fronts seemed to have crumbled en mass. A politician, accompanied by local assistants and a camera crew were visiting the local families, shaking hands and nodding sympathetically. It was not necessary to understand Spanish to understand that this small town too had suffered from Wednesday's earth tremor.

90 minutes later we stretched our legs again, at the Mano del Desierto, (S677), the third stop without cacti or any other plants. There were cracks in the fingers at the back of the statue. More damage from the earth quake?

We rectified this situation, three hours later as we were checking the usual Copiapoa taltalensis ssp desertorum stop in the Quebrada El Griton for flowers  (S678). There were some, but again not many, and all were red(dish) as before.   The signs, announcing that the area was off-limits as it had been taken over by the Navy as an exercise ground, were still up, but we heard or saw no activity so planned to plead ignorance (not too difficult) if challenged.

Job done, we took the scenic coast road back to Taltal, with the lowering sun bringing out the magnificent colours of the coastal hills. Pictures taken (again non cactus) were recorded as S679.

We returned to the 'Ali G' Hotel, where those who had stayed in Taltal were glad to see us in one piece. The news of the earth quake had caused some concerns along the whole Chilean coast that it would be followed by a tsunami. Fortunately this proved not to be the case. Juan and Florencia rang to say that they were in Antofagasta and were reviewing their plans to go to Tocopilla to look for the cacti that had escaped us. Later, they still heard large boulders coming down the hillsides and judged it better to try again later.