The Cactus Trip Diaries

For the benefit of those who have been on previous Copiapoathons, in Guanaqueros we tried to get into the Cabañas where we stayed in 2007 – but they were full for the next week or more. We moved a few hundred meters along to where we stayed in 2001, 2004 and 2006. Same story, although I was pleased that the rotund ex-German owner recognised me and asked how my German wife was. So a few hundred meters along again, and we are in Cabanas Andalue, which are the best of the bunch yet!

For the British audience, Guanaqueros in early January is like Newquay on an August Bank Holiday weekend. The car park opposite Restaurant Pequena is charging GBP 2 to park and it is FULL!

A late start, just one stop (S1148), an early return ‘home’ – so was this a bad day? Certainly not. But cactus-exploring is not a hard-nosed, target driven thing and today we took it easy with a late start, arriving at (yet another) Totoralillo, just about 16 km north from Guanaqueros around noon. The Chilean tourists were even more laid back and the car parks and beach were still empty. It’s a small peninsula with sandy beaches either side of a track that leads to some posh cabanas and a restaurant at the end. We had a late lunch there and were served (?) by a man who reminded me of a 70 year old Manuel from the UK TV comedy program Fawlty Towers, but with his pacemaker removed or in reverse!

On the patio, Juan & Flo spotted a TV personality with her boy friend. She is the judge on Chile’s equivalent to the American ‘Judge Judy’ (or July?) show, where she settles small claim court cases for people who want to hang out their dirty washing in public.

We left the beaches and restaurants behind us for now and went into the low rocky hills where we found Copiapoa coquimbana – the dense spined form that we also found at Los Hornos and on Isla Chañaral. In the cracks of the rocks grew small seedling Eriosyce subgibbosa with some much larger plants growing between rocks. Juan & Flo also found a number of plants of Eriosyce heinrichiana var setosiflora. The ceroids here were Echinopsis (Trichocereus) coquimbana – which is the same one that grows at our regular Los Hornos stop but that I have probably misidentified since 2001, and Eulychnia sp. For a moment I thought all my work on describing a new species of Eulychnia (E. chorosensis n.n.) had gone down the drain as I was confronted with some Eulychnia that looked like VERY hairy E. acida, but had an upright rather than decumbent growth habit. What was going on?

Then I remembered how I was surprised at the size and colour of the fruits of E. acida yesterday and it dawned on me that I had never seen really ripe Eulychnia fruit before as our timing on previous trips has either seen them in bud or in flower with unripe fruit. When the fruit is ripe,the fruit spontaneously falls to the ground, like apples from an apple tree. I had been surprised by the fairly regular thud as these fruits were coming down in Fray Jorge yesterday. Here, and farther along, I came across another Eulychnia that was clearly E. breviflora. It was in bud, for a second flush of flowers and a neighbour was actually in flower. Nice woolly hypanthium, as you would expect. But they both also had large ripe fruits and these looked more like hairy E. acida fruit, or like the scalp of a balding man. And as I gently stroked the fruit, more of the wool readily came off. Not something that I have seen reported in literature before. I’ll ask Juan to check this out on E. iquiquensis and E. taltalensis as he is continuing farther north as a guide for a Californian couple, Steve & Phyllis Frieze from L.A. while Cliff & I return to Santiago on 5 January. So, another useful bit of info and pictures added to the Eulychnia files.

We also photographed an assortment of butterflies, caterpillars etc. so all in all, another great day! 

New Year’s Eve in Pichidangui is an event I won’t forget in a hurry! The otherwise empty restaurant was chock a block and we had a great meal – steak, chips, salad, too many Piscos and beer. But many of the guests were Argentinean, they must have been in the queue at the border with us!

At 12:00 there was a good firework display over the bay, the road was closed off and full of partying people, some in fancy dress, all drinking. Of course the weather is ideal for such an event – it really was more like an August Bank Holiday. I was thinking of Angie standing in the cold with her neighbour Margaret drinking a glass of champagne in the close, three hours earlier, when Big Ben had rung in the New Year in the UK.
Despite all the drinking at the restaurant, we opened up a bottle of Malbec from Mendoza to drink in the Cabañas – so slept well, to 9 a.m. this time!

One of Cliff’s favourite bands is Pink Floyd, so as we drove along R5, I asked him what he’d rather do on New Year’s Day: listen to Pink Floyd or go Eriosyce spotting at Fray Jorge. ‘Why don’t we do both?’ he replied with a smile, as a track of Pink Floyd’s LP The Division Bell played on my portable Juke Box through the car’s audio system. And that’s what we did.

Today’s visit was prompted by Juan Carlos Johow asking me what I thought that the Trichocereus was that grew in his garden. I hesitated to suggest E. chiloensis ssp litoralis. He thought that, like the other fog oasis area at Fray Jorge, it might be E. skottsbergii, but I had to admit that I was not very well up on Trichoes and that, try as I might, I could not see more than one Trichocereus there, unless they are cryptic species, i.e. they look the same but are genetically separated by different flowering seasons (not unlike Eriosyce chilensis and E. subgibbosa at Pichidangui). Juan Carlos had a special reason for asking the question, as his grandfather was the person who had described Trichocereus litoralis many years ago.

So today was started by taking some pictures of Trichoes around Pichidangui, just plants growing along the road on the north side of town that leads to R5, recorded as S1145. We then made two stops (S1146 and S1147) along the old track (yes the track we followed in 2001, 2003, 2004 and 2006, NOT the new track that we were directed to in 2007) to Fray Jorge. 

So what did we think?

• The Tricho at Pichidangui is different from the one growing at Fray Jorge. The Fray Jorge plant is much taller and robust than the one growing at Pichidangui.

• We could only see one Trichocereus sp. growing at Fray Jorge, not two, where one is said to be E. chiloensis (ssp. litoralis?) and the other E. skottsbergii

• There are two ceroids at Fray Jorge, an Echinopsis (Trichocereus) sp. that looks to me to be one of the many different local forms of E. chiloensis and Eulychnia acida. The Eulychnia was heavily in fruit, there were still some flowers open and some plants had fresh young buds.

• There are man made fences along the track that are made up of the two species mentioned above. When stems are not in bud/ flower / fruit, it is very difficult to differentiate between them.

• We could only find one Trichocereus sp. along the track. At times we thought that there might be two, one with more ribs and fine, soft spination, the other with fewer ribs and strong spination, but on closer inspection, both types of growth would occur on the same plant.

Other cacti spotted were Cumulopuntia sphaerica, Eriosyce aurata and Eriosyce subgibbosa ssp nigrihorrida. E. nigrihorrida was the only taxon that was not abundant. We’d find individual plants here and there, often hillsides apart, or small isolated clusters growing in a more rocky spot.

The other remarkable thing was that we were finding some (not many) younger specimens of E. aurata. Mature specimens are huge – in 2003 we found some that measured up to 90 cm (3 ft) in height, but no young plants. This is not unusual when the observer is so completely overwhelmed by the giants, that cameras click and only back in the car the point is raised that there were no young(er) plants. Due to their imposing size, plants are often dug up and sold in the larger towns where they are displayed  with pride in as architectural plants, similarly to cultivated Echinocactus grusonii in California and Arizona in the USA. But on closer inspection, these plants, taken from nature, rarely if ever survive the ordeal of transplantation – they take a long time, many years – to croak it. This time, we were less rushed and already had a huge number of images of the large plants from previous visits, so were we noticing and photographing some of the younger plants, ranging in size from 5 to 15 cm in diameter. Where as the huge plants would take special equipment to be dug up and transported, these small plants were of an ideal size to be taken home and grown on in pots on Chilean and Argentinean window sills and patios. Rodents and goats in habitat posed other threats, while the fields immediately beyond the hills that we were walking, showed that agriculture was increasingly encroaching on nature, although there were also a number of failed projects among these, as the conditions are still very arid.

We took away 150 images of the plants looking happy and healthy in nature. It was the first time that I had seen aurata in flower here, but then it was the first time that I had been here in January. A very memorable New Year’s Day!    

512 km since yesterday’s report finds us sitting in the sun at Hotel Pachamama in San Pedro de Atacama. This is the same place that we stayed at in 2001 and 2004, but that was full when we needed a room in 2006. Things have greatly improved here since. For a start it has wifi. All the ‘cabanas’ have been refurbished. For the benefit of Leo, John Ede, Marlon, Anne Adams and of course Alain (who is the only one of that bunch actually receiving this drivvel), we are now staying ‘next door’ at #2, instead of #1. Of course the other change is that the price has gone up from 19,000 pesos I believe in 2004, to 45,000 but breakfast is now included.

Did we see any cacti? Yes, at 100 km p h, some Cumulopuntia boliviana. Did we take any cactus pictures? No, not at 100 km p h! I’ll have to brush up my techniques now that Angie tells me of her success in the recent BCSS photo competition. Well done!

Tomorrow the border with Argentina opens at 8 a.m., at the same time that breakfast is served here, so we should be across by 9, says he hopefully. That is ‘through the Chilean control’, just outside San Pedro. Then there is about 140 km to the actual border and another huge distance to the Argentinean control.

Cheers

PK

Post script
For the benefit of those who have visited San Pedro de Atacama before, here is a brief analysis of the tourist industry today.

In 2001 we amused ourselves with coach loads of ‘back packers’, fresh off the plane in Santiago or Calama airports, bussed in and complaining that their Nike trainers were getting muddy in the puddles after a brief shower – their back packs still shrink wrapped in cling film. Electricity was provided by a local generator that switched off at 10:00 p.m. or 11:00 on Friday and Saturday nights. Our hotel gave out candles to provide us with light when the power was off.

At night time, the main streets were bustling with tourists, many restaurants would have no table space, unless you had booked and the place was buzzing. A recipe for success you’d say.

Wrong!

Today, it seems San Pedro has gone ‘corporate’. That is to say that large tour operators have bought or block booked the best appointed facilities. Visitors are bussed in by the tour operator, straight to their hotel, where the activities are arranged, dinner and evening entertainment are provided and where visitors are only ‘let out’ on a guided tour of the town – church, museum …. and really, there isn’t much else.

So the restaurants were embarrassingly empty, there was room at the first accommodation we called at and the restaurants were positively begging you to come in. Lots of empty seats and miserable faces.

And of course, Europe and the USA are meant to be in recession, so perhaps there are people who have decided to holiday closer to home.

What a difference with 2001, 2004 and 2006!!! And of course the town has tried to keep up with time, e.g. by putting up fancy and inappropriate electric street lights. The candles given out in 2001, when the power went off at 10 or 11 had already gone by 2004. Prices for food and drink are still 100% more than Arica, but, while this was fine when demand outstripped supply, it is no longer tenable in the current climate.

In time, San Pedro will become entirely ‘locked hotel’ tourism or a two tier system will evolve.

In the past, the excursions offered were a) the 4 a.m. departure breakfast trip to the geysers at El Tatio or b) the night time laser show at Valle de la Luna.  Now, it’s extreme sports, with day trips to the actual craters of the volcanoes that dominate the surrounding scenery, taking you with oxygen to 6,000 m plus! And ‘snow-boarding-on-sand’ on the ‘dunes’ in the  Valle de la Luna and extreme mountain biking on the outskirts of town.

In the past, exited young girls from X would meet hormonally challenged young lads from Y and have long philosophical discussions about the meaning of live, before getting down to what teenagers do. Now, a number of the pretty girls parading on the square may as well have the label ‘call girl’ tattooed on their fore heads.

As you can tell, grumpy old men, drinking a bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon each at (moderate) altitude can still put the world to rights.

Oh yes, it’s an early start tomorrow!

End of rant.

The clocks in the UK turned to Winter Time on 25 October and the weather took note as the following morning I woke up to the sound of people scraping ice from their car windscreens. Although days were generally bright, the temperature was in the grip of a cold front. Roads nearby the Stonehenge Cactarium were even covered in snow as freak weather conditions played havoc with the traffic. Yuck, another British Winter.

Fortunately, I had my escape planned and on the first Friday of ‘winter’, Cliff Thompson and I headed off for Chile (via a change of plane in Atlanta, USA).

After our 2003 Copiapoathon, that time a 4 week trip with a strong focus on anything to do with cacti in the Genus Copiapoa, I published the Copiapoathon Diaries 2003 on various forums. This became a tradition that was followed for Copiapoathon 2004, Argentina 2005 and Copiapoathon 2006. Copiapoathon 2007 became a bit more difficult, because after the usual 3 weeks in the field, with up to 23 participants, I stayed on for another 4 weeks with Leo van der Hoeven. We travelled south of Santiago, with Florencia Señoret and Juan Acosta before returning to England. 7 weeks of Diary pages seemed a bit much for a cactus forum, so the diaries were added straight onto my website: www.copiapoa.info

There was not much time to prepare the diaries in 2007; soon after returning from Chile, Angie & I were off for a more touristy 16 days on a grand tour of South America, visiting Peru, Bolivia, Argentina and Brazil. No Diaries were published of this trip, nor of the next one: Bajathon 2008, that started one week after the Grand Tour.

The 2008 Bajathon consisted of two trips from San Diego, California to Los Cabos at the southern tip of the Baja California peninsula and back again, with a few weeks of looking around Arizona and California and even finding time to make new friends and showing a few C&S Societies in California my holiday pictures.

Back in the UK, in April, I made several attempts at combining the experiences of the two Baja trips into one set of ‘virtual diaries’ – a 12 day report of what we saw between Tijuana and Los Cabos – doing talks and catching up with various matters that had piled up during my absence means that the Bajathon Diaries remain a yet to be completed project.

The plan is to share our (Cliff Thompson’s and my) experiences, in a series of occasional Diaries, as daily Diaries for the 150 days – 5 months – that we are away from home, seem a little over the top and too time consuming to prepare and read.

Cheers

PK

A peek out of the plane’s window as I woke up revealed another snow covered mountainous landscape, this time the Pyrenees. Later, thick cloud cover obstructed the view of the Alps as we approached Zurich for our brief European stop over.

The temperature at Heathrow on arrival back in the UK was the same value as when we left Santiago: 32. The difference was that here it was degrees Fahrenheit, while in Santiago it had been Centigrade. Angie was there to welcome me home and as she drove me back to Durrington, there was an opportunity to take the last pictures of the trip, a glorious sunset over Wiltshire, timed at 16:06 as we approached the Amesbury exit of the A303.

While it’s good to be back home, I always prefer to have plans for future trips already on the table. So it may come as no surprise to discover that some of these Diary pages were written on holiday in Cologne, Germany where we celebrated Christmas with Angie’s family and in less than a week from completing this page, Angie and I will be in the air on our way to Lima, Peru, but this time on a South American Tourist Highlights package tour, also taking in Bolivia, Argentina and Brazil.  As you can tell, I hate the dark days of (European) winters!

View Full Album

Andy and John were the first to arrive safely at around 9:30 a.m. in Santiago, soon to be followed by the Air France contingent, despite the threat of strikes in France that had worried them for most of the preceding week. They were met by representatives of LYS Rent a Car, our usual supplier of the 4×4 pick up trucks that we use on these trips. This time they took delivery of 2 Nissan Terranos, with a covered back to the pick up and before too long set of on their journey to Guanaqueros, some 450 km north of the Airport for our first night’s rendez vous. Leo and I also arrived on time at around 11:45, 20 hours and 10 minutes after leaving London, having spent a total of 16 hours and 17 minutes in the air to cover a distance of 13,252 km. As our third car was a late booking, our contact, Andres Gabor, had no other suitable 4×4’s available, but had arranged a deal with Budget Rent A Car, who have a desk at the airport. Our Mitsubishi was as good as the Toyota Hiluxes of previous trips in getting us to any place we needed to go to see cacti.

Having finalized the formalities with the car, Leo guarded our luggage in the car while I went back into the Airport arrival lounge to meet up with Trevor Sellman who arrived an hour after us from Australia, to complete our car party. Glaswegian folk rockers Travis were due to arrive around the same time, so Trevor was quite impressed with the welcoming committee, including a number of attractive young ladies, that I appeared to have organised. We tore ourselves away and joined Leo in the car park.

Our first and only cactus stop on our way to Guanaqueros (S606) was along Ruta 5, the Pan American Highway, as Leo, from behind the steering wheel, driving at the max. permitted 120 km per hour, spotted some cacti in flower on the rocky hillside along the side of the road. These turned out to be Eriosyce (Neoporteria) subgibbosa ssp nigrihorrida growing alongside Echinopsis (Trichocereus) chiloensis, the latter in bud or in flower.

At Guanaqueros we met up with the other two car parties. Our intended accommodation, cabañas at Club Bahia, were not available, but the advance party had found similar (in my mind better) cabañas a few hundred meters along at Las Dunas, where we shared 2 chalets between 9 people. This included a total of 4 sets of bunk beds, testing our old bones as to who would / could sleep in the top beds.

We enjoyed our first Chilean meal, in the fish restaurant in the centre of the village where, in 2001, I had celebrated my birthday. As would happen repeatedly on the trip, I could hear echoes of the voices of people with whom I had shared this experience on previous trips and who were remembered in toasts to absent friends.

As we were leaving the El Pequeño restaurant, a voice shouted ‘Hello Ian!’. It was Peque (Magdalena Garcés), one of the Chilean participants of the 2003 Copiapoathon, but now married and not so interested in cacti anymore. It was like walking into your local restaurant or pub, 13,000 km from home and meeting an old friend. It’s a small world! 

Finally, some 48 hours after getting up in Durrington, I put my head down and was asleep within seconds.

View Full Album

It was about 3:00 on Friday afternoon, 2 November when Angie dropped me off at the Terminal 2 Car Park at London’s Heathrow Airport. Unlike last year, she would stay in the UK as her holiday entitlement for the year was already used / committed.

I was quite early, as our flight was not due to leave until 18:35, but the road systems around London are often heavily congested, particularly on a Friday afternoon and Angie had to be back home in time for her son Adrian to come home from College.

As I pushed my trolley into the departure hall, I bumped into Cliff Thompson, who had arrived even earlier by coach. John Childs and his partner Billy, and Andy Woods from Cardiff had also beaten me to the airport. Soon we were joined by Leo van der Hoeven, Sarda & Ian Woolnough and Mike Harvey. No sooner was the party complete, it started to break up, as we were split over 4 different flights to Santiago, due to the different times of booking the cheapest flights. So, while Andy & John flew with Iberia from London to Madrid to Santiago, Sarda & Ian, Mike and Cliff caught the Air France flight via Paris while Leo and I had the best deal for our longer flight from Swiss Air, via Zurich and Sao Paulo in Brazil. Billy stayed behind and would join John at the end of the Copiapoathon proper for a three week non-cactus holiday. So, potentially a recipe for disaster with so many bodies and their luggage taking so many different routes to the same place. However, it all went very smooth, without any hiccups, except that Mike nearly missed his flight as Security wanted to have a chat about his Swiss Army pen knife that he had forgotten to remove from his hand luggage.

Leo and I had an uneventful flight to Sao Paulo and on to Santiago

Today’s plan was to take it easy with a gentle 200 km drive on Ruta 5 – The Pan-American Highway to Guanaqueros. Although the main focus of the trip remained Copiapoa, I have also taken a great interest in the Genus Eulychnia. At yesterday’s stops we had seen E. castanea in flower, with its characteristic spiny hypanthium. How far north does this occur?

My southern-most Copiapoa to date was one planted at the Ranger station at the Fray Jorge National Park. The Rio Lamari to the south of the Park is often understood to be its natural boundary.

And so spotting locations for these two taxa became the aim for today.

Friends had reported seeing Copiapoa growing as far south as Huentelaquon, Bahia Teniente and La Cebada, small coastal hamlets and exits off Ruta 5, suggesting that the Rio Choapa rather than the Rio Lamari might be the southern boundary. We found the exits easily enough – as they flashed by at 120 km.p.hr. Unlike motorways in the UK, there is rarely signage to count the motorist down from 300 m to 200 m to 100 m to a junction with long slip roads. If slip roads exist in Chile, they are extremely short. So, unless you know exactly where the turning (often a dirt road) is, you fly past and need to resist the temptation to reverse back on the hard shoulder and wait until the next exit, often tens of km. further on, to turn back. Alternatively, you crawl along at 30 km.p.hr. to hit the turning, with the risk of being run over by a mega-truck thundering along at some 100 km.p.hr.

So, we missed the turning at Huentelaquon, and somehow ended up on a track leading inland to the village of Mincha Sur, separated from Mincha Norte by the Rio Choapa. S514 gave a nice panoramic view of the Pan-Am crossing the Rio Choapa, with the Ocean in the background, confirming that we were on the wrong side of both the road and the river. The stop was prompted by finding Echinopsis (Trichocereus) chiloensis and a Puya sp. in flower. After a few more km. the track was bordered by solid hedges of Trichocereus and Eulychnia, as affective as any hedge or fence at keeping animals (including people) in or out. According to signage, the aim was motivated by both agriculture and conservation – to combat desertification.

Back on Ruta 5, we flew past the exit for Caleta Teniente and concluded that there seemed little promise of Copiapoa from what we could see at the high speed pass by. So on to the last opportunity: La Cebada, recommended by our Chilean friends Ricardo Keim & Ingrid Schaub. This exit was better indicated and had a reasonable slip road, but the tarmac turned into a dirt track within metres. No problem for a Toyota Hilux 4×4. Soon the track narrowed and made a steep 10 m descend. A bend at the bottom and next a gate. The hand break just held on the steep hill. Angie jumped out but reported the gate as locked. No space for a 3 point turn, so into reverse. Much spinning of wheels, covering Angie in dust and sand, but gravity kept pulling me closer to the gate. Engage 4x4WD. Great, but on these models that involves turning the front wheel nuts into a lock position and then switching between 1st & reverse until the extra drive engages. The gate drew closer and closer until finally the gears kicked in and I inched backwards up the hill and away from the gate (S515). Unsure of how far beyond the gate we needed to go to see our cacti, we consulted some maps and decided to take some overview pictures and study these for a solution on the way back.

The map indicated a track running west off Ruta 5 towards the coast to Mina Talca. We found the turn off and soon found ourselves at the impressive gates of Hacienda Talinay. The gates were open and there were no signs discouraging visitors, so we drove on. Another disappointment, as it seemed that we had reached another area earmarked for tourist development. We drove for kilometres along a grid of tracks through a flat sandy area covered in desert scrub, heading for low rolling hills (S516). The area had been marked out into small parcels that together would have formed a fair sized town if all are developed. But how would this dry area sustain such a large number of people?  Back in England, a search on Google provided a further insight to what we saw: http://www.talinay.com/ and confirmed our fears.

We returned to the Pan Am and continued north, stopping for ‘motion lotion’ at the services at Termas de Socos, a regular fuel stop on previous stops. Why? Because there are no more filling stations for many miles to come. Back on Ruta 5, we passed the turning to the Fray Jorge National Park. Time moves on, whether you find interesting plants or are just become mildly frustrated by the lack of success. And so we approached the turn off to Tongoy and Guanaqueros to find a bed for the night. No trouble, as we were still outside of Chile’s tourist season and were the only visitors to the cabañas at Bahia Club, selected in 2001 from the many other facilities in the village because our fellow traveller on that occasion, Marlon Machado, comes from the Brazilian State of the same name.

First though, we took the track to  El Pangue, hoping to find a track to the coast at Puerto Aldea. A lot more signage at the track to Puerto Aldea seemed to suggest that this was a ‘no access’ track to private property. Either we had taken a wrong turn or had misunderstood the signs ‘Revinto Privado’ and ‘Prohibido Pasar’ that would have been like red rags to a bull to our usual companion, Leo van der Hoeven. But Leo was on a cactus trip in northern Brazil, so we both made mental notes to make more effort to improve our Spanish language skills once back in England. With the prospect of a nice shower and a typical sea food dinner, washed down with some Chilean vino in Guanaqueros, we decided to turn back and stop at some Eulychnia in flower that we had passed earlier.

S517 was a typical cactus hedge consisting mostly of Eulychnia. These were tall, branching plants, rather than the sprawling E. castanea that we had seen further south.  The botanical key for the genus Eulychnia focuses on the pericarpel and fruit that are either spiny (E. castanea), naked scales (E. acida) or woolly (E. breviflora and E. iquiquensis). So what would we find here? I entered ‘aff. E. acida‘ in my notes. Not ‘pure’ acida, as there were just a few hairs in addition to the scales.  I’m working on a www.eulychnia.info website and will expand on this further once these Diaries have been completed for 2006.

A bit further along (S518) the sprawling cactus turned out to be an Echinopsis (Trichocereus) sp. but for now I’ll resist the temptation to add another genus to my list of ‘to be studied in more detail’ cacti, bearing in mind the range of classification systems and ‘valid’ taxa for this genus. Nearly as bad as Eriosyce, but that is a different story.