The Cactus Trip Diaries

Past fans of the Cactus Trip Diaries will be pleased to see that we’re off for another adventure. Today Angie, Cliff and I leave for Porto Alegre in the Brazilian State of Rio Grande do Sul where we’ll meet up with Marlon Machado from Salvador, Bahia and with Woody Minnich, John Senior and Rob Skillin from the USA. For Angie, this is just a two week trip, during which she hopes to see as many members of one of her favourite genera of cacti, Frailea, in nature. The Americans and Marlon stay a few days longer but Cliff and I have a total of four weeks to see more plants at more location.

Cliff & I then fly from Porto Alegre to Belo Horizonte, the capital of the State of Minas Gerais, where we hope to see lots of Uebelmannia, Discocactus and Coleocephalocereus (Buiningia) locations.

Four weeks later, we fly into Salvador, the capital of the State of Bahia and the State where Marlon now lives and works. Cliff and I will again spend four weeks indulging our hobbies of seeing and photographing the local cacti in habitat, expecting an abundance of Melocactus, Pilosocereus and Micranthocereus species to cross our camera lenses. 

If you are reading this in advance of 16 October – I am trying out this blogging service as a means to eventually have all my Cactus Trip Diaries in one place. In the past I used to write up my trip Diaries once I got home, but this is just not practical for the longer trips, particularly when soon after coming home, we’ll be off again: this time on 3 February 2010 to Cuba.

As well as sharing texts, I hope to publish pictures of each day’s experiences as well. Much will depend on the availability of Internet connections to publish our reports, while spare time before our trips might see some more of our previous trip reports published here.

Cheers

PK