The Cactus Trip Diaries

We had hoped to spend today with Florencia in Lonquen. Flo would have loved to have come with us tho ‘her’ Norte, but as she was expecting the birth of her first baby sometime during our trip, that was not a very practical proposition. Brian recalled how last year’s trip, Giggly Girl made it one of the happiest that he can recall.

I am not a great fan of mobile phones etc that in South America seem to have replaced computers and email to stay in touch – my eyes struggle to read the screens unless I’m in a well shaded room and my ‘blind’ left ear (a Brian Bates expression as for many years he did not know the word for ‘deaf’ in Spanish) means that I also struggle to hear a caller on a mobile device unless I’m in a very quiet room. Yesterday Flo dropped me a line on Facebook to say that she had given birth to a son, Atilio, who at two weeks of age, demanded all of her time. We understand and send mother and son our very best wishes and look forward to seeing both of them in the field, surrounded by cacti, in years to come.

Pablo Weisser had asked to meet us tomorrow at Santiago Airport, so we thought we might provide a surprise for him by looking him up ‘at home’ in Olmue, and sent him an email to announce our change of plans at very short notice.

But first of all, we allowed ourselves a final cactus photo shoot on the rocks at Pichidangui.

We enjoyed a leisurely drive to Olmue and arrived at the Weisser family’s residence, but it was all locked up. Never mind, we had arranged to see Pablo at the Airport on Saturday before take off. Jonathan and I could use the time to do a final repack and tidy up Suzy who had picked up quite a layer of dust on the inside during the previous five weeks!