The first time I visited the town of Vicuña, on 11 May 2001, we came across a cactus and succulent plant nursery that became S008 on my checklist of cactus related photo stops taken in 'cactus country'. Juan had also visited this place and the owner had proudly produced his scrap book with pages printed from the Internet, including a page from Copiapoa.info containing a picture of he and his wife posing for my camera.

We had tried to visit the place the previous day, but sadly arrived after closing tie, to be told by neighbours that the sales house would be open again at 9 a.m. the next morning. And so we found ourselves back at the same spot as six years ago which this time became S714. The range of plants was much the same, a mixture of exotics, such as Euphorbia, Aloe vera, some Mammillaria, Opuntia etc but also some local cacti, presumably rescue plants, as it is illegal to trade in habitat collected plants in Chile and the nursery was situated immediately opposite the police station. The tremendous development of vineyards in the Elqui Valley continues to take its toll on the cactus population that are being pushed back to the really steep slopes, unsuitable for agriculure.

Juan explained that I was the person who had taken their picture and that it was displayed on my website. He was delighted to meet Leo and I again and seemed to have learned from my 2001 suggestion to sell seed of the local cacti, as he sold me enough E. aurata seed to start a small nursery, for under two pounds (c. US$D 4). My suggestion however had been for the sale of seed instead of plants, not 'as-well-as'. There was a large golden spined Eriosyce aurata for sale, $10,000 (roughly GBP 10 or US$ 20). I thought it best not to think of how much it would fetch on eBay. He called his wife and I took another picture.

We took the road south of Vicuña, signposted to Hurtado. As we drove through the barren hillsides, sparsely covered by scrub, Echinopsis (Trichocereus) chiloensis appeared to be the only cactus around. But was this the same as the plant that we had already seen so often on our travels? The spines were the longest that I had seen; over 30 cm in length! It was by far the dominant form of vegetation with thousands of plants covering hill after hill after hill.

A good two hours drive out of Vicuña we finally spotted the first golden spined E. aurata of the day. It soon became clear why Juan had been reluctant to risk his life climbing the steep slopes for a single specimen a day earlier - here (S715) they grew right by the side of the road, many to 60 cm (24") tall with a similar diameter. Most were in bud and it was not long before we found the first plant with open flowers. The massive spines of Echinopsis chiloensis also has a yellow to orange tinge. Coincidence? or something caused by their shared environment?

There were also smaller cacti here with long silvery spines: Eriosyce eriosyzoides. So why had they not followed the yellow spined theme, even when yesterday we had seen proof that they could.

It does not seem to matter how wonderful the cacti are, but there comes a point at any cactus stop that you've taken pictures of just about every plant from just about every conceivable angle and the time comes to move on to the next stop.

S716, between the villages of Morrillos and Seron, was prompted by a crested Echinopsis chiloensis spotted a few meters from the road.  I was quite happy to lean out rhough the car window to take its picture, but Leo and his 28 mm lens needed to get much closer. You see Leo, size does matter! Time will tell who took the better picture.

As we had pulled over anyway, Juan and I also clambered up the two meter tall embankment to take a look at what else was around and were rewarded by the rare sight of a four headed clump of E. aurata, as normally they are solitary plants. There was also something that looked like Cumulopuntia sphaerica, but I still need to check if there is another taxon from this area. And E. erisyzoides was also around, and Eulychnia acida and, what the heck, we had reached the base of the crested Echinopsis, so I might as well take a picture with the 18 mm setting on my zoom lens, just in case Leo's wide angle shot had been better than my earlier zoomed effort.

We drove on, but slowed down to take pictures of a flock of parrots performing acrobatics on the telephone wires alongside the road.

We found our way into and out of Ovalle and were soon heading south again on Ruta 5, after yet another brief hot dog stop at the Copec station at Soccos, where I'm sure the staff were beginning to recognise us as regular customers. Time was pushing on and we decided to spend the night in Pichidangui. That meant that if we wanted to, we could have another go at the exit at Bahia Teniente. With just the one car to consider and by now well familiar with the exact location of the entrance it was no surprise that this time we succeeded. If only we had the 4x4, but this time it was the light weight Kia, better suited to the streets of Santiago. Still, we had been impressed with its ability to tackle the track over the hills to Hurtado, so we gently pushed on and found that the sandy track reached the Ocean and then turned north (S717). A quick look at the maps confirmed that this would lead to our stop at La Cebada, only 4 km north of Bahia Teniente. We spread out, I first took pictures of the thick thickets of Eulychnia castanea all around the car and the densely spined Eriosyce subgibbosa that grew on the rocks down to the Ocean. When finished, I saw Juan wave from the top of a high rocky outcrop farther inland, while Leo was disappearing up into the low hills as usual. I made my way over to the rocky outcrop and after taking a look all round it came a across two or three clumps of Copiapoa coquimbana, almost buried in the soft sand. Juan had already moved on to the hill next to Leo's.

Juan was back at the car soon after me and we had arranged to pick Leo up along the track. As we made our way back to Ruta 5, Leo reported not having seen any Copiapoa here. I thanked Juan for calling me over to the rocky outcrop. He too reported not havingt seen any Copiapoa. What about the three clumps at the outcrop? He had not seen them. Fortunately I had pictures to prove that they were there.