Wednesday, 22 October 2014 – Jaumave to Matehuila
It had to happen, by going to a cheaper hotel in Matehuela, we missed out on wifi, making it more difficult to issue the daily missives. Never mind, the restaurant where we had dinner had wifi, but when we returned the following morning, so that I could post this record of our adventures, my laptop refused to switch on, despite having been on charge all night long. Never mind, here a bit later than planned is what we did on Wednesday.
We made five stops and missed out on a sixth because two pick up trucks with a number of fine burly men told us that we were not allowed to look at the Pelecyphora strobiliformis near El Refugio, because they were sure that we wanted to steal their peyote. We were not about to have a punch up, particularly as I had been there twice before already, once last March with Cliff and Ian and once in 2011 with Eunice Thompson.
But let’s focus on what we did see.
S3165 was near Miquihana where we took a turn off the very nice newly made asphalt road, to Villa Bustamante, just to look what grew on the low hill. Sarda was nominated as cactus spotter extraordinaire as she found two Ariocarpus retusus in flower. There were some huge Mammilloydia candida and some very fine Thelocactus conothelos. Not bad for an ad-hoc stop!
S3166 was another random stop rewarding us again with A. retusus in flower, Mammillaria formosa, Coryphantha sp.
S3167 was past Miquihana and still on lovely new asphalt, we saw some huge Ferocactus pilosa that were taller than Alain ‘Fero’ Buffel, so a ‘must see’ stop.
Near Doctor Arroyo we made stop S3168 and found lots of Thelocactus hexaedrophorus, T. conothelos and a Dasylirion sp.
Next we were turned away from the Pelechyphora site and so went on to S3169 where I spent three previous times to find a Turbinicarpus (I forget which) and of course failed again this time, but ironically, given the previous stops objections, we found lots of Lophophora – and did not eat or steal any!
The Cactus Trip Diaries 