The Cactus Trip Diaries

Friday, 18 March, 2011 – Bustamante, NL to Tucson, AZ

There was no time for Plant Stops as we had to drive 487 miles (784 km) over not the fastest roads in the world and deal with the time consuming bureaucratic nightmare that is crossing international borders.

! have yet to be convinced of the benefits of such activities, other than keeping huge numbers of people from contributing to the unemployment statistics. Once upon a time they used to affect travel between countries that now make up the European Community. Where once cars queued for miles or kilometers, they now flash by the man made boundary lines at the maximum speed permitted on the local motorways and none of the countries seem to have collapsed as a result of the change in attitudes. Of course it took many years to get to this and I understand that the process was not without difficulties, but worth it none the less.

Once again, we had to report to the Mexican customs office to obtain a refund of the US$400 deposit that we had to pay on entering Mexico. The lady examined the pile of documents that we presented and returned a couple of them and, with a smile said that we had to go and get more photocopies of these. There was a photocopier one step behind her. ‘Only for office use’ she explained. Not for copies of customer documents. Aargghh! I would gladly have paid what ever commercial cost there might be for the copies to be taken there and then, but again we had to walk in the burning heat some 300 m. to the little Cambio kiosk where we had these exact documents copied before, on entry. There was no point in arguing the logic and inefficiencies of the process, the staff involved are on the whole not motivated to improve the customer service that they are paid to provide – they just do as they are told and seem to enjoy the power that this gives them.

On to the US entry point. After 30 minutes in a slow moving queue it was our turn. My non US passport was the first note on the yellow card and Eunice’s black mark of having received unsolicited plant material from a plant friend in Thailand nearly a year ago was the second, so on to the inspection area. We were marched into the admin hall while a team of officers decended on Ruby. ‘Sit down’ was the instruction, as we took our place in a hall full of rows of chairs, with about 50 Mexicans waiting their turn. After about five minutes I had worked out that on entering the hall you were supposed to get a number, not unlike the system in use in UK post offices, where there are lots of notes to tell you what was expected. Not here. Some Mexicans who had entered after us were therefore now ahead of us in the queue. This was spotted by one of the officers who called me over and put me to the front of the queue. I was not about to complain. I had a valid entry stamp and permission to stay for 3 months from entering on 3 February, so what was the problem? Best not to ask as there are lots of ways in which life could suddenly become a lot more difficult.

Back to the car that had now been searched from top to bottom and declared as clean as we knew it would be. There is nothing anti-American or anti-Mexican intended in this little rant, just frustration at the inefficiencies experienced at yet another international border crossing anywhere in the world.

Sigh!

On the positive side, the whole drama, crossing from Ciudad Acuna took just over an hour, which probably makes it one of the fastest during this winter’s crossings.

We arrived in Tucson as dusk fell, still in the mood for a steak at the Silver Saddle where, on a Saturday night, Eunice had reserved a table by phone, in advance, so that we sailed by the queues waiting outside.

If only we could reserve border crossings this way! 

Friday, 17 March, 2011 – Around Bustamante

In 2010 we had spent one night sleeping on the cold floor of a cold hall at Rancho Minas Viejas, the Old Mine Ranch, owned by a friend of the owners of the Hotel where we stay in town. Although the Hall is only some 20 km from the main road, the track up the hill is in places extremely testing, so that is takes over two hours to cover the distance. In 2010 we had two punctured tyres before getting back to the main road, so I was not looking forward to making the drive again, although the views and plants found on the way and at the top were well worth it.

I agreed that the ‘Ghost of the Double Puncture’ had to be laid to rest and the only way to do this was to repeat the drive and return with all four tyres still in tact.

There was really no reason to spend the night in the cold hall again so we returned back to the comfort of a hotel bed and restaurant food.

And why did we do this? The Minas Viejas is the type locality for a particularly nice new Agave, A. ovatifolia, known in US nurseries as the Whale’s Tongue Agave. This is a fairly recent (2002) described species but has been known about for many years when it was first brought from Mexico into the US by the late Lynn Lowery, who found it growing between 3,000′ and 7,000′ elevation. It was planted around Dallas and survived for decades unscathed by cold. Agave expert Greg Starr, curious to know its identity, retraced Lynn’s route and found the original population in Mexico. It looks like an Agave parryi on steroids, forming a 36″ tall x 5′ wide (in 5 years), symmetrical clump of wide grey leaves. It has proven to be one of the best agaves for cold, wet climates, far outperforming almost all other species and in its natural settings on limestone terraces, it makes a wonderful photogenic subject. All pictures today are all recorded as S2335 and I ignored most of the cacti and succulents already reported during our 2010 visit and focussed my mind and camera on the Agave to get some very nice pictures.

On return to Bustamante we just caught the daughter of the owner of our hotel before they intended to go home as there was hardly any business. They gladly opened up and we bought some replicas of Mayan art at very reasonable prices as well enjoying nice Mexican food.

Wednesday, 16 March, 2011 – Monclova to Bustamante

‘What?’ I hear you say, ‘are they doing the Mexico trip all over again?’  It does seem that way, as today kind of repeated what we did on 26 February. Why? On that occasion we were passing through, on our way to new cactus territories. As a result we did not take the time to visit ‘The Old Mine’ again, a 2010 adventure when we experienced a double puncture. That adventure meant that we had to cut short our photography of Agave ovatifolia, a fairly recent discovery and so far unique to these hills.

Our ‘trip fatigue’ of a couple of days ago had passed, as yesterday we repeated our stops from 2010.

Monday, 14 March, 2011 – Ciudad San Luis Potosi to Gomez Palacio

The laptop that has been my faithful travel companion since 2007 seems to have finally given up. Not entirely unexpected, so I had already brought along a 10″ Notebook for emergency use and a replacement laptop awaits our return to Bellflower.

Our drive to Gomez Palacio took us through Zacatecas, a very uninspiring state as far as our cactus finds are concerned. At times I thought that I was driving through a very dry Holland, the scenery was so flat, but with hills on the horizon.

We were probably experiencing Explorers fatigue, all ‘cactussed-out’ after the incredible range of plants seen in San Luis Potosi and Tamaulipas. I certainly had to push myself to go looking for cacti. I had hoped to see and photograph at least one Stenocactus here as an excuse to show off the longest (old) cactus name: Echinofossulocactus zacatecasensis.

Just one stop today, S2327, where all we found, cactus wise, were Opuntia sp, Cylindropuntia sp and Mammillaria gummifera which at least cheered me up by being in flower.

We were quite looking forward to our fourth stay in 3 years at the Best Western Hotel in Gomez Palacio. After our first visit in 2009 we were recognised and greeted warmly on subsequent visits, which always makes a difference. This time was no exception – the gentleman who has the unenviable task of cleaning our car after weeks on limestone / gypsum dirt tracks called on two friends to give Ruby a good rub down and the car looked as good as it did when we picked  her up from Dollar Rent-a-Car.

Just one event soured our experience of Gomez Palacio. As we turned off the highway into town we were stopped by a traffic policeman on motorbike. He claimed that we had driven through an ‘Alto’ sign without stopping. Neither Eunice, who was driving, nor me in my navigator’s role had seen such a sign, but in such situations the officer of the law is always right. He only spoke Spanish, so it was difficult to argue our case or plead for a warning only. The ticket book came out and when Eunice asked how much the fine would be, he said that this would depend on how much the judge might decide in three or four days time. ‘But we are passing through!’ Eunice explained, ‘You’ll get the verdict in the post, in the US.’ He explained. ‘Roughly how much?’ Eunice asked. ‘About a day’s earnings.’ he said. But, as we did not offer to pay him cash here and then, he started to tell us that he could tell that we were good people and that in his heart he would be happy to let us go, but that he was hungry and that if we could give him some money ….. Eunice offered 200 pesos (less than US$20) and this was eagerly accepted. We then asked him for directions to the hotel and he told us to follow him, until we knew where we were.

At the hotel, reviewing the event we realised that for the first time of driving in cactus country we have fallen victim of bribery / corruption at the hands of law officers. Shame.

Sunday, 13 March, 2011 – Ciudad Victoria to Ciudad San Luis Potosi

We had a long day and my eyes are struggling to keep open, so I’ll just list the stops with the key plants photograhed. The amazing thing is not what we saw, but what we passed without stopping. And that is just the locations that have been reported and thathave made it through to my database. If I were to link the dots and assume that a particular species occurs virtually everywhere within that area, then many of the plants thatI had assumed were virtually extinct are in fact fine and exist in large numbers in habitat. Of course neither the doom stories that we hearand my overly optimistic view are true but somewhere between the two extremes lies reality and that reality changes day by day.  

What did we see?

S2320 was a stop requested by Eunice along MEX 101, as on the three occasions that we drove past this spot she had been admiringthe Agaves, Hechtia and other flora at about roughly 100 km.p.h. as huge lorries were chasing us and there were very few pull off points. It was Sunday, so traffic was much lighter and so a stop could be made. We still have to analyse what Eunice saw through her 400 mm lens and I still need to blow up the images I took of plants growing way out of reach on a steep cliff.

S2321 were sightseeing pictures of the village of Jamauve. During our stroll along the square we had nice friendly chats with some of the inhabitatnts, including policemen on duty – a very friendly village, juding from this brief visit. We learned that the town has a hotel, a bank and a Pemex, in brief, everything that a dedicated cactus explorer needs on a future visit.

 S2322 was to be a stop for Turbinicarpus pseudopectinatus but it seems that again the road building that we are reaping the benefit of may have caused the destruction of this location. There was nowhere to park for a decent exploration and if there had been, we would not have had the time for anything but a cursory look.

 S2323 was just outside Tula and soon it will probably part of the growing town. We thought that we might have had to dig up the foundations of a bungalow to get to the GPS coordinates for this location but found our target plant, Ariocarpus kotschoubeyanus v albiflorus eventually, about half a dozen plants encrusted in the gypsum / lime stone silt. We’ll have to assume that the original explorers ID for the white flowered form as being correct – there was not a flower to be seen. Lots of other cacti too. 

 For S2324 we had pulled off MEX 101 just before El Huizache, on to a track sign posted for Los Amoles.  Various cacti found but nothing special.

S2325 was at the microwave station on top of the hill that overlooks Entronque EL Huizache, aka Huizache Junction. Lots of cacti and a nice view with the star plants in my opinion Ariocarpus retusus ssp elongatus, although the ssp. name could only really be applied to one large multi headed clump growing in the shade of a Hechtia. All the other Ariocarpus conformed to the normal retusus tubercles. A thirteen headed clump of Lophophora was also worth a picture.  

That would have made my day perfect, but Eunice had one more stop up her sleeve, the Type Locality of Ariocarpus bravoanus (S2326). These were perhaps the easiest plants to find as, after we had walked some 300 m. through quite dense scrub – yes, Cylindropuntia leptocaulis once again stapled our trousers to our legs!! – the tiny plants had been painted bright red with indellible paint and tagged to discourage unscrupulous visitors from collecting the plants. This project has been the subject of an article in the CSSA Journal a few years back (Cactus and Succulent Journal 81(2):56-58. 2009) and it is good to see that the paint is still in tact. It also shows how slow growing these plants are.

It was approaching dusk when we rolled back into the Holiday Inn Express at SLP – our third and last visit here this year, but with the intention of returning sometime in the future.

Saturday, 12 March, 2011 – Tula to Ciudad Victoria

We woke up early-ish and without breakfast and wifi to distract us, were back at the 24 hour restaurant at the truck stop by 7:45 a.m. By the time we left 20 minutes later, the 24 hour restaurant was still closed. 24 hours per week, I suggested. We got a coffee and some oatmeal cookies to keep us going for the 100 km drive along an excellent asphalt road to CD Victoria.

While getting a new tyre was a clear priority, the road took us 40 m. from a location of Obregonia denegrii. This plant has always intrigued me, especially as I have never been able to grow it very well for very long. We took the turn ontoa track very near the spot and parked out of the way for the 325 m walk to the coordinates. Again, the walk was through dense scrub so we collected more scratches to arms and legs, then a barbed wire fence, fortunately in need of repair and again, spot on the coordinates, we started to find the plants. As usual, at this time of year, the plants were extremely dry and many were pulled into the soil with the best looking plants growing in the shade inside small bushes. If I did not find another plant today! It nearly made us forget that we were tyre hunting. We found what looked like a large car supermarket with the logo of just about any tyre manufacturer painted on its wall. We asked the shop assistant if they had the Goodyear tyre with spec to match our injured one, but he looked at us blankly – ‘We don’t sell tyres!’  Argghh!!!

Again many helpful Mexicans pointed at various directions as to where we might succeed. we headed off in one of the suggested directions but before we had completed the directions drove by a quick – fit type tyre vendor with workshop to fix the beast. 45 minutes we were on our way, only to get lost in the warren of streets and markets all without sign posts.

We had spotted a nice looking hotel as we drove into town, managed to find it again and decided to book in, dump the luggage and head back the way we had come, along MEX 101.

Eunice had been wanted to see the Agave and Dasylirion in the hills around Mehuihana and today got her wish. S2319 was for pictures taken along MEX79 to Miquihuana. The plants were huge and impressive and a nice change – both for us as photographers and for potential audiences at our talks.  There were small palms here as well. Names to be researched.   As we left town the way we had come, Eunice spotted the largest clump of Ferocactus echidne that I’ve seen to date – how did we miss that on the way in!?!?

Friday, 11 March, 2011 – Rio Verde to Tula

After yesterday’s remarkable find of a single T. lophophoroides and after another look for a post office, we headed east out of Rio Verde on MEX 70 and not far out of town stopped at another known location for the plant (S2311). This time we had more luck and my first find was a tiny seedling while Eunice found a little lime stone mound that was home for half a dozen plants, nicely exposed. After that things became easier and more plants were found.

Back on Mex 70 we soon turned north on a road signed for Santa Rita and San Francisco that would eventually take us to Las Tablas, the Type Locality for Turbinicarpus lophophorioides. Our next stop (S2312) took us onto a gentle sloping hill side where we looked for and found Ariocarpus retusus v scapharostroides. I’m not much of an Ariocarpus officionado and was not familiar with this particular variety. Back in the UK, I’ll have to set up a Gallery of the Ariocarpus locations visited and pictures from each population. Nice, large chunky plants. There was also a nice little Coryphantha sp. here. I see that C. glassii has been reported from near by, so will check that taxon out in literature once I’m back with my books.

With the number of stops we make and the huge cactus and other succulent plant diversity encountered, I’ll just mention the key taxa for each stop rather than a full run down that would end up to be rather repetitive.

S2313 was just a leg stretch stop with nothing cactus wise that we had not seen already.

S2314 was something else. Close, south to Las Tablas we may have expected to find T. lophophoroides here but the terrain (hilly) was completely different from where we had already seen them, so we did not specifically look for them and did not find any either. So what was noteworthy here? Last year we had seen Astrophytum capricorne in Coahuila but none of the other Astrophytums. A. myriostigma had been reported from here so that became my prime target for this walk in the heat. ‘Mad dogs and Englishmen’ again and as I am Dutch, I guess that I’m included in the Mad Dogs. These are very photogenic plants, especially when not damaged by passing animals, so just about every plant spotted was photographed. We were dumbfounded by one plant that had the number 74 written on it with a felt tip pen. Anyone lost their Astro #74? Applications to the third rock from the giant Echinocactus down the road.

Mammillaria candida was a note worthy companion, as was M. albata, distinguishable from each other by their flowers. The Ariocarpus was reported from here, but as we had just seen that, we were not specifically looking for this plant and did not find any. And I would not specifically mention Echinocactus platyacanthus that we now know to be wide spread and able to grow into real giants, if it had not been for the largest ‘globular’ cactus I have ever seen, a specimen that measured more than 3 m (yes, 9 ft) in height – a giant amongst giants. Eunice was elsewhere on the hill, so I could not ask her to take a picture of me being dwarfed for once. She came back past the same plant (how could you miss it?) and also had failed to include herself with the plant in a picture. Tripods are just another item to lug around with limited use, so mine stays at home. Eunice’s stayed in the car and there were no convenient rocks with a clear line of vision to the plant. There was also a quite large green cactus here that I first thought was Coryphantha elephantes, but on reflection it might be Thelocactus hexaedroforus. If I can’t get the genus right, what chance do I stand with the specific name? And what I have been calling Echinocereus pentalophus may have been E. leonensis. Well, I gather that the current name in favour is Echinocereus pentalophus ssp leonensis, sothey are recognised to be similar. Again, something to do during the summer – check out how to distinguish one from the other. This was our ‘keynote’ stop of the day.

We dragged ourselves away as we still had a fair way to go and time was getting on.  S2315 was a brief stop to look at some large clumps of Echinocereus (enneacanthus?) growing in open land with a few low shrubs scattered around. All looking fairly well beaten up.

After the spell of driving through the flat countryside we could not help but stop when a rocky outcrop reached the road.S2316. Astrophytum and white Mams were again the main plants of interest. Opuntia microdasys was in bud and flower.

We had spent a long day out in the sun and bouncing on a poor quality track so were glad when dusty dirt turned to (badly worn) asphalt. It contained more pot holes than the average road in the UK after another hard winter. We hit a pothole full on and soon afterwards Eunice stopped explaining that the car felt ‘funny’. All wheels tyres still inflated but the rear off-side tyre had a blister the size of a fist right in the middle of the thread on the running surface. We limped on to village of Palomas where a local Vulkan (tyre repair man) confirmed our suspicion that the tyre was a write off, but kindly used his powered tools to change the wheel for us.

We had been heading for Tula, but our tyre expert advised us to go in the opposite direction to Cuidad del Maiz (Corn City) where there were more tyre shops. 28 km on tarmac without a spare were OK and we had soon reached the Corn town. The roadside in and out of the town must have had a dozen tyre shops, or at least, repair men. None had a tyre to match our needs. Time was pushing on, so we looked for a Hotel but the lady who ran the largest tyre shop smiled and said to Eunice ‘not here, go to Tula or Ciudad Victoria.’ Always keen to follow good advice, we headed off in the direction from where we had just come and past the spot where we had joined it and turned right onto MEX 101 as the sun set behind the hills to the west. The remaining 31 km (crossing into Tamaulipas) were driven in the dark, against our plans, but needs must. The town was pretty dead and we gave up our search for a place where we could buy a tyre, switching our search to accommodation. Eventually we found a Hotel San Jorge, a string of terraced chalets at a very cheap 250 pesos for the night. Breakfast was not included and there was no wifi, so having dumped our luggage we made the journey back to MEX101 where a large truck stop still had a restaurant open where my steak resembled the sole of my boots. Still, once again we did not go hungry.

Thursday, 10 March, 2011 – San Luis Potosi to Rioverde

Our hotel spells it Rioverde (one word) so that’s what I’ll stick with. We’ve seen Rio Verde as well.

After reaching our turnaround point yesterday we discussed options for the way back to Bellflower, CA. I’d guess that we have enough location data to take at least a year to get back, if we were to visit locations in a 30 km wide corridor between here and the US border. So, without tying ourselves down to a rigid route we agreed to head to Tula for a few nights. We spent a little longer than planed on the road today, so one of those ‘Tula nights’ has been replaced by a ‘Rio Verde night’.

So what did we see today. We had a late start today (10 a.m.) and were further delayed by Eunice’s search for a post office – those who have been with us on trips during March will recognise the need to find a post office to get off a birthday card to the son of a friend in CA.

We took MEX 70 out of SLP, heading for Rio Verde. I had half expected this to be a dual carriage way, but it turned out to be a two lane hard top tat took us through some very scenic areas. Some of the scenery was lost on us as clouds had decended on the top of the hills that we were driving through, windscreen wipers and lights on, with the temperature outside, at 2,133 m altitude, dropping to 8 C (45 F).

We put on jumpers and stopped (S2307) on a piece of the old MEX 70 that was now a convenient lay by. We found two different Mams,: M. erythrosperma growing in cracks in the rocks, just like Michel Lacoste’s picture on the internet and along the same road as his ML322 which would make the other Mam. M. orcuttii, Opuntia sp, Cylindropuntia sp. and Agave attenuata. This Agave is one of California’s favourite landscape plants in gardens that are large enough to accommodate a display of several plants. Of course there were Opuntia and Cylindropuntia sp. as well.

A bit farther along the road (Still S2307) we found Selenicereus sp. growing on rocks – looking just like the plants that we saw in Cuba last year.

S2308 was a leg stretch to take some pictures of the large ceroids in flower along MEX 70. The flowers were much too high up for me to look into, but I could see insects (mainly bees) flying in and out. So could the small birds (finches?) and the larger bird with a long, turned down bill (bee eater?) that seemed to be feasting on something in the flower. what are these ceroids? we saw them yesterday at Xichu as well. Stenocereus seems to be a candidate.

A bit later than anticipated we headed for a John Miller stop for T. lophophoroides near Ciudad Fernandez. As mentioned before, JM stops are usually right on the money, unless some one had built a house on the spot, as happened at an earlier location. This time, a nice new tarmac road took us to the spot – right over it!!!! We stopped by the side of the road where the plant would have been, or were the coordinates no more than a ‘car park’ location with near by explorations carried out on foot? (S2309). We searched the area in quite some detail for more than half an hour, but apart from the Stenocereus (?), Opuntia sp and Cylindropuntia sp. there were no cacti to be seen. ‘The Turbinicarpus in San Luis Potosi’ book by Grupo San Luis, Published by Cactus & Co (2004) is proving very useful as the pictures show the overviews and close ups of the plants in habitat, which helps to get your eye in. Most of the close up pictures show the plant at their best, after rainfall and in flower. We were seeing a different picture. 

T. lophophoroides is said to always grow together with Coryphantha maiz-tablasensis, so we were very pleased when Eunice found a group of three of these, the size of Thelocephala, growing pulled down into the soil in grazed grassland. Near by there were some holes in the ground that suggested human visitors. Animals tend to burrow at an angle, plant diggers tend to leave nice round holes going straight down.

On the 17 to 19th March there is a Peyote festival in the area and as the name suggests, this plant looks like a Lophophora and all Turbs contain some of the alkaloids that are used by the members of the native indian Church – so, by having the location so well known, I suggest that it was likely to have been plundered.

The Turb book suggested that we were right in the middle of the plant’s distribution area, so by driving a little distance away from the new tarmac road, we might have more luck. We had an hour or so to spare before we should look for hotels.

We headed back along the main road to the track that we had used to get there, from Cd. Fernandez. On the track, there was a fork in the road. ‘Which way?’  Eunice, driving, asked. ‘Right’ I said, ‘and at the next fork, you decide.’ The track seemed to head back to the main road, so I suggested that we’d pull up and look around for 10 minutes.

I stepped out of the car (S2310) and there, one step away, was T. lophophoroides!!!!!

We looked around for another 30 minutes, but it was the only one we found, no Coryphantha either. Eunice suggests I keep this turb spotting talent a secret, in case people want to rub my head for good luck 🙂

Their habitat is ‘different’ to the usual habitats that we see. Flat lands – grazed, on gypsum soil. It is said to get flooded when it rains in spring and autumn, but dries out quickly. Turb strategy seems to be ‘flower when ever there is water and grow from seedling to mature seed producing plant ASAP, so that the seedlings generated replace their parents who fall victim to grazing animals’ – horses and cows mainly, judging by droppings found, although goats seem to come through as well. A bit like Toumeya papyracantha and Pediocactus in the US.

Although we only found the one specimen today, it’s another tick in the ‘seen in habitat’ box; we seem to have broken the ‘look in alphabetical order’ rule that I thought had been haunting us.

Tomorrow we have an easy day’s drive over back roads via Las Tablas, the Type Locality for T. lophophoroides, so we have time to make a number of short stops to see if we can find more. And there are lots of other goodies reported as well, so we’ll see.