We had planned to depart
for a further trip to the northern part of Chile in November of 1996. As
we were standing at the door with our luggage at the ready, waiting for
the taxi to arrive to take us to the airport, there was a telephone call
from H.Middleditch. who had just received a letter in the mail from
Australia, containing one or two useful bits of information from Rudolf
Schulz, who had visited the Quebrada Botija earlier that year. In
the event, we were able to follow our plans for taking a closer look at
the Quebrada Botija. We hoped to find out more about the neat hummocks of
Copiapoa we had seen the previous year close to the coast road at
Caleta Botija, and to explore some part of the Quebrada Botija itself.
We arrived at the entry to the
Quebrada Botija rather late in the afternoon and quickly found ourselves a
camp site. A short distance further into the broad mouth of the Quebrada,
we saw a tent pitched alongside a car. On walking over to make their
acquaintance we discovered the party consisted of a Swiss doctor and a
German student doing research on Calceolarea. They mentioned that
they would like to find Miguel Diaz, but the maps they were using
were rather elementary for field work. We arranged to make the ascent of
the Quebrada Botija in company with them on the following morning.
Setting off the next day into the quebrada we followed the dry bed, strolling along for about a couple of
kilometres at which point the quebrada started to curve round and take us
in a southerly direction. A good kilometre or so further on, the main
quebrada now curved round towards the east again and here we found a
narrow side quebrada or gulley coming in from the south. The main quebrada
had been V-shaped so that most of the time we were unable to have sight of
the tops of the surrounding mountains, but at this junction with the side
quebrada we had a rather better view and we could see the mist lying over
the tops of some of the peaks.
We suspected that this side quebrada might lead us up on to higher ground and possibly in the presumed
direction of Miguel Diaz. So we then turned into this side quebrada which
was rather narrow and winding so that in many places we could hardly see
30 yards ahead. It was very rough and rugged; we were obliged to negotiate
rocks of varying sizes from large boulders downwards, partially blocking
the way up the floor of the quebrada. Roughly half way up this quebrada
(as it turned out) we came to a dry waterfall about twelve feet high which
formed a vertical barrier between almost vertical side walls. My wife
decided to stop at this spot in order to sketch the quebrada whilst the
other three of us climbed over this obstacle.
Shortly after we had entered this
narrow side quebrada we came across some small plants of Copiapoa
atacamensis as well as a clump of about five globular heads,
growing on the rocky sides. Although it was pleasantly warm when we set
off on our trek, just before the dry waterfall it had become quite cold.
Here we came across a single headed C. atacamensis and a
Neochilenia floccosa of roughly the same size, growing close
together. A little further on, there was a three headed C. atacamensis
growing on an almost vertical rock face, each stem a good foot or more in
length. They had evidently been more or less horizontal in their young
stage of growth and were now curved so the heads were almost upright, with
white farina on only the top quarter of the body. Here too was
Neochilenia floccosa, about 2 inches in diameter. The steep rocky
sides of the quebrada cut off any view above the sides and it was so
narrow that there could have been more plants on ledges which could not be
seen from the dry bed of the quebrada. Then on steeply sloping and quite
sandy ground, with odd stones, another C. atacamensis.
At the crown of the quebrada, as
we were approaching the more open ground, it became more gritty underfoot,
Here we saw an old plant of C. atacamensis with a dozen or more
heads, up to 15 inches long. About 2 km after we had left the main
quebrada the gradient began to ease, the ascent became less narrow and
rugged, as we came out on to sloping ground between hills on either side.
This sloping ground, several hundred yards broad, would presumably extend
to the saddle over to the Quebradas Izcuna. We now see a great number of
Copiapoa solaris, clumps scattered roughly a stone’s throw
away from each other. We had seen a few C. solaris in the very last
part of the quebrada, plants with up to 10-12 heads, and now there was
still the odd plant of C. atacamensis between the large clumps of
C. solaris on this flatter ground above the quebrada.
Very shortly we became enveloped
in a misty cloud which limited visibility to something like a couple of
hundred yards, the visibility constantly changing as the mist swirled back
and forth. This was the only place on the ascent where we had found
ourselves in the mist. The other two now expressed their intention of
trekking off into the mist, where all sense of direction can become lost,
so I insisted that they took my compass as I wanted to retrace my steps so
that I had time to stop on the way back in order to take notes and
photographs.
On re-entering the top of the quebrada the mist was left behind; looking across to the far side of the
main Quebrada Botija, the mountainside was covered with a sandy looking
surface, rather like the photograph 171 in the Schulz and Kapitany
Copiapoa book. On the way down we particularly noted that some of the
Neochilenia were certainly not as floccose as others, even though
we saw only a few N. floccosa during this trek. It had been
pleasantly warm when we started out that morning, but when I had climbed
down the dry waterfall I found my wife had been obliged to don all our
spare cardigans and jackets because of the cold.
Returning down the main valley we
discovered a small spring of water entering from one side of the quebrada,
with a concrete cill to hold back a few pints of water. There were still
the odd plant or two of C. solaris here and there to be seen on the
rocky walls at each side. It was very difficult to get up the steeply
sloping sides in order to photograph any of these plants and just as
difficult to perch safely on the rock and hold the camera with both hands.
Then we turned west again with
the main valley and now we find open clumps of short columnar heads of a
Copiapoa that may be Ritter’s C. variispinata. There
were very few young plants of this sort to be seen but the smallest one we
saw was a younger plant with only two heads, each about 4 inches across
and somewhat taller than broad, with 19 to 20 ribs similar to the older
plants of this sort. We did find a small C. atacamensis on a shelf
20 feet above the bottom of the valley, with a clumping plant of C.
variispinata growing on a wider shelf only a yard or so below. There
was then another tatty clump of C. variispinata with perhaps 18
ribs per head.
Approaching closer to the mouth
of the quebrada and the shore, we reached a point where we now found
growing together both the loose untidy clumps of C. variispinata as
well as the close packed neat hummocks of heads with 13 to 14 ribs which
we had come across the previous year, growing at either side of the coast
road. So there was an overlap of these two forms, but only over a short
distance.
In the Schulz and Kapitany book
on Copiapoa, the open clumps of semi-columnar heads in photographs
169, 170, and 172 would appear to be Ritter’s C. variispinata,
whilst photographs 165, 166 and 167, entitled C. variispinata by
those authors, which have been seen by various travellers at Caleta
Botija, probably require another name.
