The Cactus Trip Diaries

The BR-251 in pouring rain must be my least favourite road. Much of it is a wide two lane hard top with potholes large enough for a small saloon car to disappear into. The spray coming off the road surface is dense enough for the front of the truck that you want to overtake to be invisible. You need to concentrate on the left hand side of the truck to find a gap, so you miss the speed restrictions and speed cameras on the right hand side of the road. Alain was good at taking a broom to the front and back lights of the car at every petrol station – perhaps a bit too good, also cleaning the number plates so that the speed traps could send us speeding tickets once we got home.

Soon after Baracao, we turned right, still on tarmac, and drove through a made Eucalyptus forest. Miraculously the rain had reduced to a trickle, but after 30 minutes, just as we had taken all the images we wanted the volume increased again. We admitted defeat to the rain. It’s just no fun to walk under grey skies and get wet, even if the temperatures were higher than most days in the UK. Just one stop, S3759. We saw Discocactus sp., Pilosocereus sp. and an Arrojadoa sp. The light was too poor to get good pictures or ID.