The Cactus Trip Diaries

Friday, 3 December, 2010 – Uspallata to Mallargue

Our friends in Guillermo’s party were moving on by the time that we came down for breakfast. We would see them again tonight.

We made six stops today:

 S2085 was at Dique de Carrizal, a man made lake that seemed to provide for local tourism at the height of the tourist season in a month’s time. Tday it was deserted with sign posted indicating the attractions and eateries. It was also very much developed for agriculture, so we had little hope of finding cacti, so were pleasantly surprised (S2086) by Cereus aethiops, Tephrocactus articulata, the papyracantha (papery spines) form, Opuntia sulphurea, Echinopsis leucantha and Eriosyce (Pyrrhocactus) strausiana.

As we drove back towards the main road, we stopped near a rocky outcrop that I had spotted on the way in. How could we have missed the large clump of Echinopsis (Trichocereus) candicans in flower?

Back on the main road, we stayed on RN40, even though it changed from hard top to a gravel road, driving through a rather flat and featureless landscape for about 140 km.  We stopped (S2087) to confirm that there were no cacti hiding between the flowering shrubs. None were found.

At S2088, to re-confirm our previous (non-)findings we found a Tephrocactus sp. (very dehydrated), a bulb, to be identified later, and our first Maihuenia of the trip, M. patagonica, again very dried up.

We were nearly all asleep with the monotony of the track when the road made a sharp bend to reveal a Lago surrounded by steep hills with an Embalsa (Agua de Toro) at the end. We stopped (S2089) for scenic shots but also found Denmoza rhodacantha and Echinopsis (Trichocereus) candicans in large numbers on the hillside as an unexpected bonus.

After driving over the dam, the road went through a tunnel. We blinked like pit poneys when we emerged again into  the bright sunlight and almost immediately spotted small globular cacti in flower – Eriosyce (Pyrrhocactus) strausiana, forcing us to stop again (S2090).

We still had 113 km to go to Mallargue, where we arrived before Guillermo’s party who had taken a different route that we intend to explore tomorrow.

Wednesday, 1 December 2010 – Lonquen (Chile) to Uspallata (Argentina)

The Patagoniathon 2010 kicked off as planned with our departure from Lonquen at about 9:30.

The roads taken (Lonquen to Santiago ring road, past the airport, then R5 north, as for any regular Copiapoathon) until the turning east to Los Andes.

A fast dual carriage was got us into the mountains and when things slowed down a bit, as roads narrowed we made a brief stop to stretch our legs (S2076 – km 24, Los Espinos) and spotted a few Alstroemeria – a different sp. then encountered thus far on our travels. John was obviously more fired up and climbed through a fence to get closer pictures. Cliff was singing the praises of his new camera with incredible x30 optical zoom capability and claimed that he could almost count the anthers on the flowers some 50 meters away. Do check the lens for dust particles, Cliff!

The road climbed steeply and in places was covered by strong concrete sections not unlike a journey through the European Alps. Another leg stretch stop (S2077) and a chance to point zoom lenses at Eriosyce aurata on the opposite side of the valley. A fast flowing river made it impossible to get closer.

Then another example of the chaotic and pointless bureaucracy that is border control. It’s not just so here between Chile and Argentina, just take a look through past Diaries about the problems we have experienced trying to get ourselves and our cars in and out of Mexico / USA!

Things were not helped by the fact that there seemed to be a customs strike in progress that fortunately seemed to affect trucks and lorries only.  As usual we were passed from pillar to post – or kiosk to kiosk to be more precise, before a smartly dressed uniformed lady smiled and told us ”That’s all!’  Nice thought, but she was wrong, as 20 km down the road, at a police checkpoint, we were told that one of the forms only had three instead of four stamps. This on a form generated by the Argentinean authorities themselves. We joined another (Argentinean) car to wait to hear what should happen and were soon joined by a queue of motorbikes and cars in the same predicament. The outcome was predictable: shrugs of shoulders and we were on our way, despite the missing stamp.

It was not far to Uspallata and we made one more stop, so as not to be embarrassingly early at the hotel. S2078 gave us tall Denmoza rhodacantha, including one specimen over 2 m. tall, two Maiheniopsis glomerata and one (dead) Echinopsis leucantha. We returned to the car happy with today’s photo catch except that John, who had chosen to explore on the north side of the road, had not found any cacti at all.

We found Hotel Gran Uspallata without trouble on the outskirts of town. We’ll stay here two nights and hope that tomorrow we’ll be joined by Guillermo Rivera and a bus full of enthusiasts on his Patagonia Expedition. The passengers should include friends from Europe, so this should prove an interesting re-union! Perhaps a challenge to the annual ELK event in Belgium?

Tuesday, 30 November 2010 – Another Airport run

It’s great to welcome John Carr, from Selby, Yorkshire, England to Santiago de Chile.

It was  -10  Centigrade when he left home yesterday, the train to London was cancelled so an 8 hour trip by coach preceded his flight from London Heathrow to Sao Paulo, Brazil. Flight tracker again proved useless for flights outside US airspace, retorting that the flight was due to arrive 30 minutes early when in fact it touched down 30 minutes late. It was +27 C outside the airport and more like 30 C walking through the exposed car park.

It did not matter, we were in no particular rush and were in time for lunch plus an afternoon of chatting about travel plans, trips to the fridge to pick up an ice cold Cristal and brief spells at the pool.

By the way, either no one has been reading my posts or everyone has become so accustomed to my spelling mistakes and typos that nobody found it necessary to point out that I have been consistently misspelling Chile’s favourite lager, Cristal, with an ‘i’ instead of a ‘y’. Now I’ll have to check WordPress for a bulk search & replace function to correct all the times that I have misspelled it in the past. There is no need to notify me of other typos of which I know that there are plenty.

tomorrow we set off on the 2010 Patagoniathon!

Monday, 29 November 2010 – Another Airport run

Flight tracker is wonderful, except that it seems to work best for flights in US airspace. It did report that Cliff’s flight had not left Madrid on time and that any delays would be updated later. It suggested on one screen that the flight, due to arrive at 9:15 would be 30 minutes late, while on another screen we were advised trhat it would land at 10:08. That was the time that we pulled into the airport, got stuck in a roadworks traffic jam and ended up in the second carpark away from the terminal. ‘He might actually be waiting for us.’ I suggested optimistacally. He wasn’t, because his flight was still in the air and eventually touched down at 11:16.

Cliff emerged from customs about an hour later – much to our amazement, with Bart & Marijke Hensel! I thought that they were due to fly in tomorrow, but I got that wrong. Their Amsterdam- Madrid flight had been delayed so that they had missed their connecting flight in Madrid and ended up on the plane with Cliff. But they had also missed their connecting flight to Antofagasta so sorting out their revised flight was their next connection. It was around 15:00 hours, so not too bad and not enough time to come along to Florencia’s home for a snack and refreshments.

We hope you have a great time in Chile and look forward to learning about your experiences!

Cliff reported a nice straight forward journey from Waterlooville to Heathrow and then a series of delays in flights taking off and his plane not going as fast as it was able to, to add further to delays. 

On the way back from the Airport, we visited another  huge shopping Mall where Juan tried to get a pair of walking / climbing boots, but without success. Cliff had as much success looking for a belt, as he has lost a few pounds since the start of the October tour, also without success and I was after a hoodie to keep my ears warm in Patagonia where apparently wind is a strong feature and all four seasons can be experienced in the same day – but I was not prepared to pay mega-bucks fopr something that was designed for the surfing beaches of California. I’ll wait for something more functional and local when the need arises.

And so I settle back to my routine of computer planning the Patagoniathon and trips to the poolside with cans of Crystal.