Today we were going to drive east as far as we could before hitting the Andes and the border with Argentina. As we new that we would have to return to Vicuña along the same road, we would mark places to stop for cacti on the way back. We cheated and made one stop (S710) for some Eulychnia acida and a small Oxalis sp. - only the flower and a stalk were showing above ground - with a (relatively) enormous tap root. 

Stop numbers now became confused and I have adjusted them so that S710a is the Chilean end of the formal road to Argentina, at the customs check point (No plants photographed) and S710b is the point where a chain blocked the track and a sign announced that entry beyond this point was only for authorised personnel for the Mina El Indio. Although we saw no cacti, I took pictures of Adesmia beduvellii, Chaetanthera glabrata, Cruckshanksia hymenodon, Schizopetalon walkeri and a dwarf Lupin, Lupinis mutabilis,

At the next stop, S711, this group of plants was joined by Argylia radiata, and finally, a cactus: Cumulopuntia grandiflora. I can't claim to be a huge fan of Opuntioids, perhaps with the exception of the Tephrocacti that Guillermo Rivera showed us 'on the other side of the hills' in 2005. But the large (salmon pink) flowers that were the reason for Ritter's description certainly set this one out from the bunch. There is also a population with 'different' spination, illustrated in the Hoffmann / Walter book, that we later saw growing in Ricardo & Ingrid's collection, that makes this plant a welcome guest in any collection.

The next stop (S712) was prompted by Leo spotting a hillside with large numbers of mini golden balls, Eriosyce eriosyzoides, with lots of them bearing fruit, but without ripe seed. This was a good, healthy population with lots of mature plants, but also with plenty of seedlings and young plants once you started to look between the cracks and underneath the grasses that poked out on edges.

We had moved back onto a tarmac road surface to a place (S713) where Leo had spotted a lone but much larger plant on a rocky hill side as we passed earlier in the day. If Victoria had been here, it would have been named Eriosyce aurata 'var. Beckham Golden Balls'. Leo and Juan set off on what seemed an unnecessarily risky expedition. Leo uses a conventional slide film camera with a 28 mm wide angle lens, while my digital SLR has a zoom lens that goes up to 200 mm, so that I could take pictures from next to the car. Juan soon saw the senselessness of the operation and came back down to the road, while Leo just had to get higher, although he seemed to have given up on his original target. He disappeared behind rocks and as usual we waited and waited until the clattering of rocks from the hillside announced his return. 'Marvellous plants at the top, but not many.' he reported as soon as he reached shouting distance. 'But look look what you missed while wasting time climbing the hills' I shouted back, as his path would take him past four large plants that I had spotted and photographed by the road side. Juan had gone for a swim in the river, knowing what we were going to see tomorrow.

We noted that the ceroids (Echinopsis chiloensis and Eulychnia acida) re-appeared roughly around the same point in the valley to where vineyards had progressed. It would be interesting to know if the grapevine and these cacti shared the same climatic limits, even if the grapevines were protected by netting and fleece while the cacti had to cope on their own.

As on previous occasions, I made a small detour for a snack at a a little restaurant in Montegrande. Juan and I philosophised over a beer about the phenomenon of fifty-something men, who probably  spend the majority of their time in city suits and the majority of their earnings on large, highly polished Harley Davidson bikes and the women, a fraction of their own age, that seemed to be a fixture on most of these bikes. I had observed these groups riding around in Europe on warm summer Sundays and here they were too. What was the source for these clones? And who were the trophies and who the trophy hunters in this global phenomenon?  And were they looking for cacti? Probably not.