The Cactus Trip Diaries

Sunday 9 November 2014 – MEX to LHR

The flight eventually left some 45 minutes late, but while I was asleep, just waking up for food & drinks, we had made up enough time to arrive ahead of schedule, until we hit Heathrow airspace where we were told there was an (air) traffic jam, so that we ended up being some 15 minutes late arriving. As I had checked in my luggage (15.7 kg including souvenirs as opposed to just 11.6 kg on the LHR – MEX flight!) relatively early in Mexico City, it seemed fair that the First In – Last Out system appeared to be in use – well not really last, but there were only some half a dozen folk waiting when my bag rolled onto the belt.

I had asked Angie to bring a camera for the usual image of me emerging through the Arrival Gate for the usual ‘last image of the trip’ shot, but was sad that there was no sign of her.

When she appeared, some ten minutes later, she explained that she had been tracking the flight on-line and so had learned of my delayed departure which seemed to persist through out the flight, only to jump to the new arrival time when it was too late, plus getting stuck in her own traffic jam, on the M25. In her rush to leave home she had also forgotten the camera, so I just looked like an out of place Midnight Cowboy character. The benefit was that Angie’s delay resulted in the lowest airport car park charge that I can remember – just £3.

PS

Since returning home I’ve thrown myself into updating Google Earth with the GPS coordinates photographed on our SatNav at the start of each stop – when I remembered – and making a list of where I forgot, hoping that Alain was more conscientious in recording such stop info. It also appeared that I had ‘lost’ or ‘misplaced’ all images of 19 October, but I managed to find it in the ‘wrong’ location which happened as I was backing up all my images on to my HD as I was waiting to at the airport.

I had thought that I might have had to wait until my new laptop charger had arrived (the original was left at T1, at Mexico International Airport), but fortunately the files had not been lost in transit.

I’ve also given Angie a few viewings of what we saw, confirming that it will again be hard to select the best 400 images for 2015 presentations.

And work has started on ‘The Cactus Trip Diaries – Mexico 2014 pt 2’, another Blurb self published work that I enjoy having as my own personal souvenir of each trip.

As you can see, I’ve been busy enough to be almost unaware of the rain that has been steadily coming down since arriving in autumn sunshine on Sunday. Angie appears to have done a great job of looking after my Cacti & Succulent Plant Collection during my absence and we’ve been on shopping expedition to find suitable hangers for my ever growing collection of Stetsons / sombreros / etc. as I tend to buy one during each trip.

WHAT’S NEXT?

Plans are for a trip to give talks in California in February and for a trip back to Mexico, to explore for cacti in the states of Pueblo and Oaxaca in March 2015, a first for me, so each cactus seen will be a novelty for me. But first there are 10 days in Cologne at Angie’s Mum to look forward to, with visits to the Christmas Markets.

Cheers

PK

Friday 7 November 2014 – around San Miguel de Allende

When planning one of our trips it is important to plan for the unexpected – the flight home waits for no-one.

In March 2014 we had scheduled our reserve day for an extra night at Vizarron. The hotel facilities suited us and their were interesting plants to see or re-visit a month after we had seen them on arrival.

Walking around the town of San Miguel de Allende we agreed that this was a much nicer place to spend our last night in Mexico. There were no interesting cacti reported from the area, sometimes due to the fact that there are none to be found, sometimes due to the lack of exploration by people travelling to or from Mexico International Airport, some 250 km away.

Today we enjoyed more of a sight seeing holiday, with Alain and I enjoying gentle strolls through the town with regular ‘pit-stops’ at charming little cafe / restaurants, photographing streets and churches in the busy streets – it was surprising how many American and European languages we could hear around us and how many people working in the shops and eateries helpfully switched to good English when we tried out our improving Spenglish.

Souvenirs were added to our luggage – I had spare weight allowance and bought yet another brightly coloured blanket that would add colour to some of the surfaces in my conservatory once the plants return to their outside spots when Spring returns next year.

The huge Parroquia San Miguel Arcangel church dominates the Jardin Allende, a Plaza planted up with clipped ficus trees that provide shade for the people engaged in watching other people, moving on to the cafe restaurants around the square for refreshments or a main meal. And so our sightseeing became a bit of a pub crawl, with visits back to the near by hotel to check on a recovering Bart and to drop off our souvenir purchases.

That night there was a parade on the Plaza with two or three giant puppets were followed around the centro of town, followed by a fully dressed up Mariachi band.

Once the band returned to the square, they serenaded a couple with a small baby on the terrace of the restaurant where we had just finished dinner, providing the perfect opportunity to film their performance of two songs as a perfect ending to another trip.

Thursday 6 November 2014 – San Jose Iturbide to San Miguel de Allende

It’s only an hour’s ride on asphalt to San Miguel de Allende, the town made famous in cactology as the place where Charlie Glass inspired and set up the project often referred to as C.A.N.T.E., known here as El Charco del Ingenio Jardin Botanico. I was also keen to see the place where in the 1990’s Brian Thomson, a friend from the UK, had spent a number of months as a volunteer to help Charlie teach Mexicans the basics of cactus horticulture, including the art of grafting.  Brian’s health is not so good these days so I hope he’ll enjoy the pictures once I get home.

I had heard that the place was on a down ward spiral in recent years, but was pleasantly surprised to find the car park full with a better than expected number of visitors, including a group of visitors from the UK – was it Nottingham or Northampton Branch – there goes my memory again! Not a bad branch outing!

All the plants were well labelled, but some of the smaller plants looked a little lost in the tall grass – very au natural, but perhaps a better maintenance standard is expected in a botanic garden. It’s easy to be critical during a one off visit, but similar comments were heard from UK, US and Australian visitors as I walked through the garden. A group of school kids in uniform on a school outing shows that the place is also used educationally to help people to learn about their local plants and their uses. An interesting stop to a place that I had heard and read much about over the years.

Main plant house, well maintained with interesting cacti and other succulents.

We found three single rooms for the last two nights to enable us to get a good night’s sleep and do a final repack before Saturday’s flight home in the centre of town – a bit noisy until the music in a near by bar was switched off around 4 a.m., but as usual I was fast asleep as my head hit the pillow around 22:00 hrs.

Bart spent the afternoon resting while Alain and I, armed with our cameras took a stroll through the very scenic and touristy town – many Americans but also European tourists seem to enjoy a taste of Mexico so close to Mexico City. I heard Dutch spoken on the cafe terraces as we made a pub crawl from bar to bar to escape the heat of the sun and even spotted a car with an ‘I love Middelburg’ sticker, but with Mexican plates. Some one else who had managed to swap cold wet European winters for the Meican sun shine?

Tuesday 4 November 2014 – Rio Verde to San Jose Iturbide

Ramos Arizpe and San Luis de La Paz tie for my least favourite Mexican towns – they are noisy and messy and I can’t wait to get out. SLdLP at least has the redeeming feature that Hotel Parras had improved significantly when we visited last March compared to April 2011. So we made for the hotel with some optimism, only to be disappointed to learn that there were no vacancies. A monument in the reception area suggested that the husband of the lady who had appeared to run the hotel may have died. Very sorry. So on to Hotel San Juan next door, where a minivan with American Mexicans were just ‘down loading’ all their luggage – no sorry – full up! There are 6 hotels recognised by SatNav, plus one Motel, which we chose to ignore. Some of these were closed and the others turned out to be hostals with shared bathroom and toilet facilities – no thanks.

With daylight fading fast we drove the 26 km south to San Jose Iturbide that claimed to have four hotels and which appears to be much quieter and less noisy, with beds found at Hotel Rhodes. We missed the nice restaurant after stuffing ourselves with savoury torts – kind of bread rolls with bacon, cheese and pineapple – a sort of ‘pizza in a roll’. Bart and Alain had managed to find a liqor store where more Chilean wine was purchased together with some beer and the nasty cane sugar alcohol that Alain, Cliff and Ian used to drink with Coca Cola, a diabetic nightmare! Still, we have another visit to Turbinicarpus alonsoii to look forward to tomorrow.

But back to today. We said goodbye to ‘the other car’ – Ian and Sarda Woolnough and Cliff Thompson, who were driving back to Vizarron today for a drive to the airport on Wednesday for their flight home. Let’s hope that Cliff manages to change his flight, as he was supposed to be on my flight on Saturday night.

We must have followed the same road south, but some time apart, as we also came across the turned over truck mentioned in Ian’s report, also managing to squeeze past. Soon afterwards the traffic seemed to dry up behind us, so perhaps they decided to close the road to let the emergency services through.

We too took the road to Penamiller, but then carried on and found a better than expected road to San Luis de La Paz. I recorded three stops – one for a collection of topes (sleeping policemen) signs and then the video of us approaching, slowing down and crossing the hump. The second was a pitstop along the road where Agave attenuata was growing from the rocks alongside the road, as well as a probable Echeveria (S3210) and S3211 was made to encourage us to stretch our legs, with my back now nicely ceased up. Not a huge amount of cacti to boast about except a little cactus garden growing epiphytically on a tree trunk. If anyone can identify the Mammillaria …….(just one response, thanks to Juergen Menzel who suggested Mammillaria decipiens subsp camptotricha.

This Mammillaria decipiens subsp camptotricha joined the ranks of epiphetic cacti at S3211

Friday 31 October – Concepcion Del Oro to Matehuala

Friday 31 October – Concepcion Del Oro to Matehuala

Today confirmed my opinion from 2011 that Zacatecas was a fairly boring flat part of Mexico with few plants to enthuse a cactophile, with perhaps, as an exception, Stenocactus multicostatus, which as Echinocactus zacatecensis as a synonym, used to regularly pop up in cactus quizes as the cactus taxon with the longest binomial name. Even if contestants knew the answer, few were willing to risk its pronounciation, but is that a good reason for dropping the name?

I believe that all of us were quite pleased to leave the roadside ‘hotel & restaurant’ behind us. What seemed a reasonable place to pull into as we passed it late at night (i.e. after sunset) seemed preferable to driving into an unknown town where, based on our sight of the huge open cast mine during the previous afternoon brought back memories of Chile where occasionally we would find mining towns with no accommodation available with all rooms pre-booked by the local mines, whether they were occupied or not. The Friday of a public holiday weekend, Dia de Muertas – Halloween in the UK or as the religious holiday of Todos Santos – All Saints Day in the UK.

The wifi signal in the hotel was not strong enough to stream data through to Google Earth to check my data to see what cacti might be found here, so we headed south along MEX 54 towards the State capital, Zacatecas. At San Burcio we turned east onto MEX 62 and soon decided to make a comfort call at S3196 or had it been planned? Back home, writing up my notes after the trip, I see that this stop coincides with the only cactus data for the area with Ariocarpus retusus and Lophophora williamsii reported from 400 m. away (and probably found here by Ian who, with greater fitness that reflects his younger years, covers more distance than ‘the old gits’) – the reported plants were just 400 m away on the same hillside. On the plus side, as I tend to record any cactus taxon found at a stop, we were able to add many more taxa to this area, even if their name for now might just be limited to ‘sp.’ But the long long stretches of dead straight roads were for me the most memorable feature here.

The list of cacti that I photographed here , mainly as ‘for the record’ images consists of:
Ferocactus pilosus, three different Opuntia, including O. microdasys, two Coryphantha including C. pseudoechinus, two Mammillaria, including M. formosa, and Cylindropuntia imbricata as well as Agave, Yucca and Tradescantia sp., indicating that there is often more to an area, cactus-wise, than the database suggests.

We crossed the border from Zacatecas into San Luis Potosi where we stopped to add Lophophora williamsii to the list of plants photographed at S3197 and, closer to Matehuala, at S3198 it was a similar list again.

Thursday 30 October 2014 – General Cepeda to Concepcion del Oro

No, I had not forgotten about today! Some days we either have no time to put pen to paper (i.e. fingers to the keyboard) while on days like today, the rumoured wifi is just not up to the task of writing and publishing the blog. Tonight was such a night, so I’m writing this missive sitting in front of the telly in the comfort of my living room in cold(ish) wet and dark England, from memory, which my friends and travel companions frequently remind me is not as good as it used to be, Fortunately I can’t remember how good my memory might have been or when. That’s life!

So today’s notes are prepared by using the  133 images taken at seven brief stops as we took a look at for us unknown territory as we entered the Mexican State of Zacatecas. There was not much I knew about this state, apart that a cactus named after this State used to feature in in C&S quizzes as the cactus taxon with the longest binomial name: Echinofossulocactus zacatecasensis, before it was re-classified as a Stenocactus. Many quiz masters must have heaved a sigh of relief. I wonder what the longest binomial cactus name is today, and for how long.

Why are we here? At Ian’s request, to try and see an ‘Echinomastus’ species so probably a Sclerocactus these days. Trouble was that he could not remember the plant’s name, did not know what it looked like, except that it had beautiful central spines and did not know exactly where it grew, other than ‘on flat lands around Cedros in the State of Zacatecas. Did we find it? May be. I spotted a plant that I could not ID, called over my fellow experts and had no choice but accept the general opinion that my plant was ‘just’ a Coryphantha species. Since then I discovered a website dedicated to the genus Echinomastus and found the Echinomastus gallery run by Christophe Ludwig from Soufflenheim, France that contains a large number of pictures of  images of grafted pot grown plants, raised from ex-habitat material. Some of these look as though their names could be candidates for the plant I saw. Then again, it could just be it is ‘just’ a Coryphantha. Judge for yourself: Christophe’s website is at http://cludwigfr.dyndns.org/gallery.asp?d=%5CEchinomastus&p= and the plant that I photographed in a large flat area near Cedros, Zacatecas is shown below.

Did I find an Echinomastus sp or ‘just’ a Coryphantha sp at Cedros, ZAC? (S3193)

So what about the other six stops?

S3189 was near General Cepeda, COAH where we looked for Ariocarpus retusus ‘furfuraceus’

S3190 was off MEX54, the Saltillo to Zacatecas Highway, near San Juan del Retiro where I photographed a Mam. sp, Echinocactus platyacanthus, Coryphantha sp, Mam. pottsii, Fouqueria splendens (no leaves), Ariocarpus retusus, in flower, but with most of the petals nibbled off, Sclerocactus (Ancistrocactus) uncinatus and Echinocereus enneacanthus,

S3191 near  Bonanza, where we hummed and whistled the theme tune of the Western series from the 1960s and saw the same plants again, plus Opuntia microdasys plus Stenocactus sp.

S3192 near Matamoros with Cylindropuntia sp,, Opuntia sp., Echinocereus enneacanthus, huge Ferocactus pilosus, and where Cliff managed to get an Acacia spine stuck in one of the tyres. A Vulka was soon found and when the thorn was pulled out of the tyre, it soon took on the flat appearance that required some patching up. The problem was quickly fixed and with the trip now over, I can reveal that this was the only puncture between our two cars during the 5319 km that our car covered, with the other car doing a bit less, as the occupants had to return three days earlier. Not bad compared to the number of punctures reported by others!

S3194 was for a snake that those in the lead car saw being run down by an oncoming motorbike. The snake was taking a breather and seemed just dazed. We were not risking getting too close, just in case it wanted to take revenge.

S3195 was near Mazapil, off the Concepcion Del Oro to Tecoclotes road. SatNav was very confused here as it seems that all roads had been altered here recently when gold was found here. The controversial development by a Canadian Mining company sees them accused of exploitation of the poor local farmers. It seems that they are prepared for tempers to flare up as there were armed guards all round the long perimeter.

We stayed in a truck stop hotel restaurant on the MEX54. At least the restaurant claimed to have wifi.

Wednesday, 29 October 2014 – Cuatro Cienegas to General Cepeda

Not the most rewarding day, as we made haste to head south through an area where numerous stops were made on past trips. Czech friends at ELK had suggested a spot to the west of MEX 57 to Los Colorados. Not sure if we had the rights place, but the track that we turned onto went through a gate waring us that we were on private property of Rancho San Luis ‘Prohibido cazar o tirer basura’ (Hunting and rubbish dumping prohibited. So looking for and taking photos of cacti was assumed to be OK. We drove 24 km along a dead straight road and saw no one. Then there was the track to the south that we had to follow for another 6.5 km. After 4 km the track became very poor with deep ruts, much wider than our wheels so common sense decided to make this our turn around point. Another 2.5 km would have taken us nearer the foothills, but not actually to them, so we decided to drive back to a small hill that we had passed on the way and try our luck there. A nice enough crop of cacti, but nothing spectacular.

S3188 Scenery – Echinocereus and Opuntia

We found rooms in the wonderfu;l Hotel Santa Rosa in the village of General Cepeda, having miossed it somehow on previous drive pasts in 2010 and 2011. Found a nice enough and very friendly restaurant on the village square and on the way ‘home’ passed a shop that sold ‘cowboy hats’, so another one was added to the PK Hattery collection – just about one for every trip. Pictures will have to wait until day light tomorrow.

Tuesday 28 October 2014 – around Cuatro Cienegas

It was a short drive, just 4.7 km from the Hotel to the location where I had been at least twice before, usually at the end of the day, tired, with no great memory of previous visits. This visit (S3184) I will remember, as we were greeted within a couple of steps from the car by Ariocarpus fissuratus in full flower – when a few weeks earlier when Alain and Eunice visited here, there had not been any flowers.

First plant to greet me at the Ariocarpus fissuratus stop (S3184)

All the cacti spotted during previous visits were still here, including some large Astrophytum capricorne, that had been in flower during Alain’s previous visit but now had finished – you can’t have it all! 107 images later, mostly of Ariocarpus in flower, I was beginning to suffer from Ariocarpus indigestion! How many flowering Ario pictures do you need? Quite a few more it seems, as we moved on to our usual A. kotschoubeyanus location along MEX 30 (S3185). Of all the Kots locations that I have seen, this has the densest gathering of tiny cacti. Despite the mass flowering here, the flowers were still too small and the plants too far apart to create a true ‘purple haze’ affect, although I feel optimistic about what can be done with some time in PhotoShop – Christiaan, please take note!

Mass flowering at S3185, but the flowers and plants were unable to create the stunning purple haze effect that I had seen in the Atacama Desert by Calandrinia longicarpa in flower.

It was very hot, 34 C according to the car’s thermometer, and another 82 images later, Ario indigestion was complete. So on for a few more km to the turning where in March we had emerged after a tortuous track through the desert from Parras. It can be done, but I would not recommend it! This time we stopped at the junction with MEX30 (S3186) and some very nice, tall, Thelocactus bicolor subsp bolaensis. Previous visitors have called the plants here ‘Thelocactus wagnerianus’, so a bit more reading is due. The remarkable thing here is that we found one Thelo still in flower. Many more had been in flower during our March visit. There is also a very nice Echinocereus here. Is it E. stramineus? E. longisetus? Answers on a postcard please (or by email).

Echinocereus ID please!

And so,  still very early in the afternoon, we decided on one more stop (S3187), along MEX 30, opposite the turning to S3185, before spending the afternoon at the poolside of the hotel with cool beers and a refreshing breeze.  The T. bicolor subsp. bolaensis were here too, and again there were some plants still in flower – great!

Thelocactus bicolor subsp. bolaensis (S3187)

We have reached the northern most part of our trip, so tomorrow we start heading south again.

Monday 27 October 2014 – Ramos Arispe to Cuatro Cienegas

Lots of driving, mostly on excellent asphalt and four stops where the expectations regarding plants were met.

S3180 was an ad-hoc stop, because we needed to stretch our legs and provided most of the cacti that you might expect to find anywhere in Coahuila. SatNav tells me that we were near General Cepada. Plants photographed, in the order that the pictures were taken include Echinocactus horizonthalonius, Agave lechuguilla, Fouqueria splendens, Thelocactus bicolor and its subsp. bolaensis (so much for the rule that a species and its subspecies are not supposed to grow together), Lophophora williamsii, Opuntia rufida, Echinocereus stramineus, Corynopuntia sp., Mammillaria heyderi, Coryphantha sp (probably more than one – Ian has names) Astrophytum capricorne, and Epithelantha micromeris or one of its many names, real or imagined. Not a bad start for an unplanned Coahuila stop, but not  completely unexpected.

For S3181 we turned off Mex 40 at Estacion Marte, having pulled towards it by a table mountain called El Pillar. I had been here before in 2010 when some Mexicans were processing Agave leaves by turning them through a ‘mill’ to obtain pulp and fibre. This time the equipment was still there, but not in use. We crossed the railway before a long train with a variety of freight wagons passed through. Another 2 km past the village, the track offered access to a vast area of dried mud flats where in the past (Spring time) we had found Ariocarpus kotschoubeyanus and an assortment of other cacti struggling for survival. This was supposed to be their flowering time and we were not disappointed, but instead of the 100 % mass flowering that I had hoped for, this was a rather modest show by those plants, covered in dried up silt that had managed to push their flowers through the mud. Some of these had their flowers eaten by (we presume) a beetle that was seen marching around, leaving flower remains near the plants. I set myself the challenge of taking a picture of a plant in flower, with a wide angle setting that also included the expanse of desert and El Pillar in the background. I might need the help of my son, Christiaan, and his CGI wizardry, to convey both my expectations and reality for future presentations.

Ariocarpus kotschoubeyanus (S3181)

As we approached El Pillar, we drove along huge silt flats that were sure to contain huge numbers of A. kotschoubeyanus as well, but in true cactus tourist style we had driven straight passed these to our intended target. With our objective reached, we relaxed and made a random stop along the road that we had passed on Mex 40 to our turning to E. Marte and made a ‘quick’ ad-hoc stop, S3182. By the time that two cars have pulled over, released their passengers and equipment into the desert, get their bearings, take plenty of pictures before being shepherded back towards the car, at least an hour had passed – just to give you an impression of what a ‘quick stop’ means.

Next a stiff drive at speeds between 100 and 120 kph to La Paloma where we turned into the desert to a spot where in the past we had found crested Ariocarpus retusus. Would the whole crest be in flower? We will never know. Many of the plants were still in advanced bud, some had today opened their flowers. The crest that Ian had found in March was looking unwell, the crests that Alain had found three weeks earlier were not seen. I asked Alain for the information, which he said he had given to Ian, I asked Ian, who said it was stored away on his computer. In any event, the plants were not found, until I read Ian’s report of the day.

Ariocarpus retusus (S3183)

Fortunately I had found a number of crested retusus plants here before in 2010 when John Bleck showed me the plants that he had found. This time, and last March, we were distracted by a gate that had since been built to reach the exact spot where we had parked that time.

Ten minutes after continuing our journey to Cuatro Cienegas, Alain asked if we would see Ariocarpus agavoides. May be, but as I have seen it already  …..

We’ll probably pass that way, and it would be churlish to avoid sharing past experiences with friends.

Some 50 km south of Monclova, traffic suddenly came to a halt. Of course those in a hurry (most) just had to overtake, trucks, salloon cars and everything. The queue went as far as the eye could see. There was nothing coming the other way, just as well, as there was no way through for them. The usual characters, you get them all over the world, got out of their cars and marched purposefully towards the assumed couse of the hold up, but outside their air conditioned car soon found that the temperature rather soon ‘cooled’ their tempers. After some 45 minutes, traffic suddenly started moving our way – still nothing coming through from the north. It appeared that police had just closed the road and at a gravel track, sent us south east, towards MEX 53. We must have looked quite a convoy on Google Earth, if that had been life, a stream of cars several km. long throwing up lots of dust, moving through the desert at some 50 kph.

When we hit MEX 53 we were still 47 km south of Monclova, so arrived in Cuatro Cienegas in the dark, but fortunately Restaurant El Doc stays open until 23:00 hrs, so we didn’t go hungry. Alain and Eunice had eaten here a few weeks earlier and Alain was able to recommend the rib-eye but warned against the T-bone, so four rib-eyes were ordered, but, disappointingly, four T-bones were served. Never mind.