Today we drove to the coast. From Valparaiso we headed north on the Panamericana, and headed to Los Molles and a nice reserve on the coast called Puquen. The reserve is privately owned and home to a great collection of local plants. The highlights were two species of cacti that meet in the region and produce some beautiful intermediate hybrids. One species has yellow to cream-coloured flowers and the other species has bright pink flowers with a more or less narrower calyx. The hybrid has pink flowers with variable tonality and open calyces. The hybrid cacti grow on rocky substrate near the sea. The reserve was so full of cacti that in some places you had to be very careful not to step in one of the hundred of spins recruits that covered the ground. The coastline was amazing; a rocky shore with abrupt cliffs and facing straight to the see that broke agains the rocks in big splashes of blue and white.
The reserve is named after the native word for devil. We hiked to the top of a sea cliff to find out why. On the way we stopped to listen to the sounds of a large group of sea lions perched on a sea rock. The rock had a snowy cap of guano, and the sea lions had somehow climbed almost to the top of the 20-30m tall rock island. The males called with deep and raspy voices. I recorded the sound of the sea and the sea lions in my phone. Closing your eyes while listening to this guttural and primitive sound was the perfect way to approach the devil’s lair. The sky was grey and the wind blew inland. We then reached the devil’s house. First, it just looked like another crevice in the volcanic rock that makes the coast. But then it arrived. With a deafening roar, a column of water was vaporised a few meters in the air. But what was most sobering, almost scary, was the sound that this oceanic blowhole produced. Not every wave produced the animalistic roar. It appeared as if the cave needed to rest and recharge between calls in order to produce the vaporised scream. Gaston told me that the coast used to be full of these blowholes, but that most have been dynamited. The towns people are sure that deep in the black rock of these bottomless wells, lives a devil or Puquen. The sound they produce is a bad omen that forecasts storms, earthquakes and other natural disasters. The sea this day was relatively calm, but they say that when the sea swell grows the blow hole can be heard, and be seen, from a long distance. After a while of listening to the ominous Puquen, we headed back to the reserve’s entrance. The place was deserted and the exit door locked. We had to climb the wall to exit the reserve. As I prepared to jump from the wall and land near the car that would take us back to civilisation, I couldn’t resist a last look back to the place where the Puquen hid. I was slightly glad to leave that devil behind.
