The road went through the
Chilean Saltpetre area around Maria Elena. The earlier individual
private businesses that used to harvest the saltpetre is no longer
cost effective, so that there are now just a few large corporates
left. We travelled through an area where bulldozers had been
removing layers of soil, so that the area resembled a bomb site.
Farther north, the saltpetre strata formed a snow white crust on
the surface so that it just needed to be scooped up. The closer we
got to Arica, the more desolate was the desert landscape. Near a
hill top grew Tillandsia
werdermanniana, which Prof Rauh from
Heidelberg had asked me to collect. The plants looked like dried
grass, resembling hay, on the baking hot light yellow soil. We
were unable to find any live plants while Ritter told me that he
had seen healthy plants here during the last 10 years. It seems
that in the north of Chile and in the south of Peru the climate is
becoming increasingly more arid.
We therefore decided to
pass by Iquique with
Pyrrhocactus floribundus (Ritter's earlier P.
iquiquensis) and with the most southern locality for
Haageocereus decumbens.
In Arica we visited some
friends of Ritter. We also had to buy crates to ship home the
plants that I had collected, to Holland. This was not an easy
process but eventually everything was ready. It was much more
difficult for Ritter to obtain the documents to be able totake his
car across the border into Peru. After a week of trying, it seemed
an impossible task, until a friend, Mr. Nevermann,
advised that he should join the Chilean Automobile Club, and
within an hour all formalities could be completed for a reasonable
sum.
