The Cactus Trip Diaries

Another rest day, with the only even worth reporting (?) is that we went to have our hair cut, so we look nice and tidy for Peru, tomorrow.

Today was very much a resting and planning day. Only things to report are:

• We took our car back – despite the UJ problem it had performed extremely well and took us to many wonderful and out of the way places. I always feel a touch emotional when we say goodbye to a car, and this one had been longer with us than most; 15,000 km in fact. Add to that the 1,020 km that we did in the replacement car and we have 16,020 km clocked up so far, ignoring the distances travelled by airplane; providing another indication, if one were needed, of how mad we are – all this in the pursuit of cacti!
  
• We then went to book our flights to Lima – everything for tomorrow was booked, so we’re now going on 8th January, giving us an extra rest day and saving us US$40 each. Will also help us to get car rental sorted.

Oh, and we took Flo shopping at the local supermarket; things don’t get much more exciting than that! No photo stops today!

The advantage of having an out and out driving day, on a by now very familiar Ruta 5 is that the Diary entry for today can be mercifully brief: Left Vallenar 9:20, arrived Lonquen just after 19:00, having stopped to pick up a take away from the Chinese where we at with Angie in November – is it really that long ago?

Distance driven 700 km plus.

We can now safely say that during the last 64 days we had not one puncture! Just a Universal Joint break down, but that showed that our provider was great in getting us out of a pickle, especially if I compare that with our experience in 2001, when our Nissan suffered a burnt out clutch and we were left to sort things out for ourselves.

Today there were no cactus stops and only 10 pictures taken and I have no idea why I took those – more a trigger happy finger reflex than anything meaningful.

If I am going to be brief, I’d better stop now.

Many Copiapoathoners will be familiar with one of our regular stops at Maitencillo, just over the bridge, where, next to an electricity substation there is a plot of wasteland where since 2001 we have been finding Eriosyce (Thelocephala) napina ssp lembckei and Copiapoa alticostata.

Where we normally turn south, to Agua del Ojo, they have now built a school and some houses – started 26 November 2007, finished 25 May 2008. It already looks old and worn. As a result, the track to the Thelocephala lembckei and Copiapoa alticostata site has been moved, so that it now runs straight through the middle of that site, up to the electricity substation that has also grown. This time we made this S1153.

There were still plenty of plants, but as always here the Copiapoa looked stressed and you could not help but step on the Thelocephala.

In 2006, Angie & I drove on to see if these plants also grew there, and they did, but all of a sudden it seemed as though they were building a new town in 2006 with hundreds of porto-loos along the track. We carried on until the road went back to being a bumpy track and then turned back.

Yesterday we tried to get to Mina Algarrobo as a way to get from the Domeyko to Carrizalillo track to the Vallenar to Huasco road, but failed, so today I thought that we’d try it from the other side. from Maitencillo, and took this gravel road highway to where we made a stop in 2006, among rocks, about 10 – 15 km in. Today everything is now flat, with a signpost to Mirador Maitencillo (S1154). Now, a Mirador is a panoramic view point, so off we went to investigate, it was only some 10 m from the road. And what does it offer a view of? Of a huge chicken farm! Guess they have to feed all those miners somehow. But it was a weird Mirador.

They had also turned the viewpoint into a cactarium, claiming that they had replanted Copiapoa coquimbana and Eriosyce napina that were disturbed by the developments. So we made an inspection and found loads of Thelocephala that were in fruit, so we have lots of seed. But they grew just as abundantly outside the cactarium, I think there is a huge seed bank in the natural soil.

Anyway, nice of the government to have made the effort! Chile stands out as a champion of this kind of eco-consciousness – well done!

In 2006, the road development petered out and we turned back. Now the road went on! Still gravel, but good quality and fast. After a while, the track joined an even better gravel track, that should be the one signposted to Mina Algarrobo on R5, just before you get to Vallenar coming from Santiago. We were pleased to hit this junction as it seemed (for once) that reality matched with what we had seen on the map.

We joined the main track at km 16 and at km 25 made a stop (S1155) because we were seeing many Eriosyce aurata type plants among the masses of Miqueliopuntia, Eulychnia etc. We found some more E. aurata types with the ‘funny fruit’, so we have enough seed now to supply the world! Juan told us that an old name for this plant was Eriosyce algarrobensis. We’ve seen towns, villages and just name signs for Algarroba all over Chile and wondered which of these was the one that this plant was named after. So here it was! But it was not as convincingly bald as yesterday’s find. BTW Algarrobo is a type of tree found throughout the arid areas of South America.

I worked out that around km 30 – 35, we should get to Mina Algarrobo and we did. As I feared, barriers were closed and guards were on duty. This is a massive mine!

In our best Spenglish and with ‘butter-would-not-melt-in-my-mouth’ faces (yes, I don’t know how we did that) we pointed at the map and asked ‘Donde es la camino a Domeyko?’ He poured over the map, then the flow of Spanish, then a wave to his supervisor who was asleep in his car. He explained that we wanted to get through and had a map that was up to date but did not show that the road would be blocked.

Fortunately the boss said that we could drive through and pointed to where a track disappeared over the hill. I think that if it had not been the Xmas / New Year weekend, with no one around, we would have been sent back. So we followed the track, Cliff driving, as it zig zagged in between a load of concrete huts that had huge mounds of earth around them – i.e. the explosives depots, and got out of the mine area, after passing another guard post where again we used the map and an  innocent request ‘Which way to Domeyko?’ to get out.

Now it got interesting, because there were a myriad of tracks and no sign posts, so we followed our noses, down a main Quebrada. Eventually, we’d have to cross the range of hills to the north of the Domeyko – El Sarco track and sure enough, we climbed from 200 to 1,115 m altitude.

We enjoyed lunch (a bread roll with queso y jamon, pinched from breakfast) literally sitting on top of the world with glorious views. We could make out the Llanos (plain) de Choros, so tried to head down tracks in that direction. Just as we thought that we should be getting to the Domeyko – El Sarco track, we saw cars – a main road. But it turned out to be R5, which we joined at km 615, which we reckon is about 5 km north of Domeyko. So we were much farther inland than we thought and this explains the lack of cacti.

By now it was mid afternoon and we decided to head back to the hotel, some 50 km away in Vallenar, for an early beer and shower.

Tomorrow, Cliff, Flo & I return to Santiago where on Tuesday we hand the car back. Then on Wednesday, we hope to have a ticket to fly to Lima Peru and rent a car there.

And that’s all for today folks!

I’m getting more and more fond of the area south of the Rio Huasco, the Llanos de Choros, Carrizalilo, El Sarco, the track from Freirina to Labrar and all the unexplored roads to the numerous small mines. Today I wanted to find the road to Mina Algarobo that after the mine leads to  Maitencillo (where we found them building a 6 lane truck highway to the mine )

Now, naively, I expected to turn left at Domeyko and after 17 – 20 km find a road or track with a sign saying ‘Mina Algarobo, x km to go’

Around where we expected the turn to the right, we found a turn to the left instead, signposted to Cortadera, which of course is not on any map that I had with me. As we were on an exploring day and had no particular constraints, we decided to drive 30 minutes or 10 km (which ever came first) and then turn back to complete our intended plan. We reached km 9 after 25 minutes and then the km markers stopped, so when we hit a 3 way fork in the road, we decided to turn around. I took pictures of the km posts on the way back, to get their GPS coordinates, so I can map out on Google Earth where we went. I guess the 3 way fork was at km 11.

So we took a ridge each – mine a bit lower than Cliff’s, so that it was out of the wind: I found only dead plants and it was bloody hot, c 30C +. Cliff’s hill had a nice cool breeze, so we guess that it caught the fog more regularly, so had Miqueliopuntia, Cumulopuntia sphaerica, and Eriosyce aurata. And then we found an E. aurata with very unusual fruit, Not woolly but bald and ‘blown up’ like balloons and yellow in colour, protruding far beyond the spines in the apex and easy to remove. And Bingo! lots of seed! Juan tells us that Adrianna Hoffmann kept the name Eriosyce spinibarbis for these plants that are supposed to be transitions between E. aurata and E. rodentiophilla. To my thinking, they are ‘odd balls’. We only found one such plant (in fruit, that is) while the other specimens in fruit all had ‘normal’ aurata seedpods.

We also found a Cumulopuntia sp, like C. boliviana, but not in the Andes and here at only 500 – 600 m. Very nice with bright orange spination. This must be C. domeykoensis that the experts (have they ever seen it?) have lumped into C. sphaerica, which it is most definitely not – as I took pictures of both at the same location. I’d guess that conditions were once different and allowed a continuous population that split once things got much harsher.

When we got back to about km 1-4 on this new track we found many Copiapoa. You may remember from earlier trip reports that we regularly stop on the Domeyko to Carrizalillo – El Sarco track to see Ritter’s Copiapoa domeykoensis between km 17 and 19. There we found few plants, not very big. Well, this track to Cortadera is near by and the Copiapoa here (should be the same) form huge clumps and are very nice.

After taking far too many pictures (again) we returned to the Domeyko – Carrizalillo road (now nicely salted and almost like a hard top) and found various tracks sign posted to various named mines, but not the one to Mina Algarobo. We guess that they must want trucks etc to use another track, from near Vallenar, where ours should come out.

We found some helpful locals shyly crawling from their shacks, asked them if this was the road to Mina Algarobo / Maitencillo / Freirina, only to be met with a flood of words that we did not understand but with shaking of the head indicating ‘No Way Jose’. Again, we’d follow each of these tracks for 5 – 10 km take pictures to get GPS records so that we can map them out on Google Earth, but we found nothing new or different.

Just as the main road turns south, 30 km north of Carrizalillo, there was a track off to the north signposted for El Morado that I was sure would join up with the Labrar road and take us to Freirina. We met a truck coming the other way and asked in our best Spenglish if it lead to where we thought and were met again by the familiar shaking of heads. We then met 3 cars with Chilean students who spoke excellent English, who explained that they had been told by the truck driver that there was no pass that could be used to get to Freirina. There had been an old road, but not maintained for years. So we thanked them and all turned round. It was 5 p.m.by now and too late for adventures.

As we got back to the main track, I was mulling over what we were told and feel that the truck driver meant ‘not passable in these cars’ i.e. the students’ VW Polo, Renault Clio etc, BUT NOT A HILUX, as he had not seen us at that point.

We may have another go tomorrow.