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Saturday 4 February – Nueva Italia to Coalcoman

There are just two Ferocacti reported from the State of Michoacan. We saw F. lindsayi yesterday and we were now heading with no more than names of towns to an area in the hope to find F. reppenhagenii, aka as F. alammosanus subsp. reppenhagenii.

SatNav systems are wonderful if you know how to use them. Three SatNav systems in the same – every mobile phone these days has the capability – can be confusing. There are many roads that lead to Rome and the same can be said for Coalcoman. I had planned a route first to Dos Aguas, then to Coalcoman. It was meant to be a tortuous slow road taking some 8 hours to cover just 199 km. SatNav had us arriving at our final destination a few hours earlier than anticipated. We seemed to be heading north, rather than west, which was a worry. After a while I had ruled out the confusion caused by windy roads. At this time I was more interested in looking where we were going than spotting plants of interest and so was very glad that the others in the car had their eyes peeled as the unanimous shout of ‘Militaris’ went up. A quick U turn and we were able to park the car almost next to the plant (behind a fence) but also found a second plant across the road close to an area where construction work was in progress.

We persuaded Chris to impersonate Derek Bowdery and pose next to the plant for scale.

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To get to this plant we had to clamber over ground that had been partially cleared for more building work. Many cacti had been bulldozed over. Chris managed to find a small clump of three Mammillaria sp, with another single headed specimen not far away. There were stems showing a white woolly pseudocephalium: Pilosocereus sp – I believe P. chrysacanthus comes from here, also a possible Hylocereus sp. (S3549) Excellent stop!

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We eventually made it to Dos Aguas, all on good asphalt but instead of finding the poor quality track to Coalcoman, SatNav sent us back the 70 km we had just come to take us on a faster track to Coalcoman. We made another stop (S3550) at Puerto de las Cruces and found a big old tree with about a thousand epiphytes growing all over it. Bromeliads and Orchids and who knows what else.

We reached the town of Coalcoman and the hotel that I had spotted on the internet, the excellent Hotel Plaza San Jorge. We are staying two nights.

 

 

 

Category:

2017 Mexico Ferothon

Friday 3 February – Patzcuaro to Nueva Italia de Ruiz

Our luck had changed for the better last night as we approached the city of Patzcuaro in the dark at about 8 p.m. after a long day. I announced that I had enough and so mobile phones and SatNavs started searching for nearby hotels. Just at that time the trusted sign of a Best Western Hotel appeared on our side of the road. This will do! And so we woke up this morning in the Best Western Posada de Don Vasco, Patzcuaro. Lovely authentic feel to a very comfortable hotel with excellent food. I managed to take some pictures of the building and the excellently maintained gardens (S3546). The Poinsettias still had their red bracts on display and were about 2 m (6 ft 7″) tall. In the UK they appear everywhere in mid-December as Christmas presents when visit friends and relations over the festive seasons and have usually been killed by overwatering by the time that we take our Christmas decorations down by the 12th day of Christmas.

Our primary target plant today was Ferocactus lindsayi.   Other than the island endemic taxa in Baja California, Ferocactus lindsayi must be the most illusive Ferocactus in cultivation.  Why? It grows quite some distance from the Mexican cactus hot spots and judging from my computer searches in England, there are not many cactus locations reported from Michoacan State. So not too many cactophiles spend their limited holiday time allowance in this comparatively remote area. As a result, few plants and seeds have made it to Europe where it is said to be ‘tricky’ in cultivation.
Today we set off to see F. lindsayi at three different locations, reported by Nigel Taylor and Paul Hoxey some 15 years ago. We also had locations reported by Wolter ten Hoeve, one of which had been visited a week or so ago by Ian & Cliff. The secondary target plant was Pachycereus (Backebergia) militaris.  This was a very popular plant in the 1970s with many top-cuts being imported into Europe for their impressive cephalia.  As we headed south on MEX37D, we tried to get off past Nueva Italia on the old (Libre) road but must have missed the turning. SatNav must have been set to ‘fastest / shortest route and pointed us onto the toll road. Yes, very fast and smooth, but without opportunities to stop once we started to see P. militaris either side of the road.
We had the GPS coordinates for Ian & Cliff’s stop and this took us off the MEX37D, first onto the Libre and then on a side road that ended in a dead end after we had passed and marked Ian’s spot. To get off the 37D, we hade to pay the toll for the previous stretchand I notived that the toll booth was at the hamlet of Las Cañas. Ralph Martin’s field number list shows ‘WTH 786 – Wolter ten Hoeve: On a steep rocky hill, South of Las Cañas on MICH-10, Michoacán, Mexico in 2009′. As we drove to Ian’s coordinates, I became sure that this was the same spot.
We parked up and pointed our cameras to the exposed hillside and with my 300mm lens could clearly see a dozen or so plants, high on quite a steep hill, with excellent tight barbed wire at the foot of the hill. We walked along the track to look for easier access and were fortunate to spot one plant, with fruits, roughly at eye-level. Here we queued up and in turn took 3-4 pictures from different angles. One of the fruits was examined and the seed was found to look ripe. We then went to explore on the other side of the fence. I made my way back to the car to the spot described in some detail by Ian and arrived, just as Chris came down to it from the other side.
Ferocactus lindsayi S3547

Ferocactus lindsayi S3547

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We successfully negotiated the barbed wire and found some more plants, some mature and in fruit but also a number of seedlings, I’d guess about five years of age. [PS: Probably much more like 15 years or more, having seen 12 year old plants since.]
Wolter and Ian both reported Mammillaria growing here as well. Wolter reports M. beneckei, as does Ian, with an additional two ‘different taxa’. In addition to the cacti mentioned, the hills were quite densely covered in ceroids, of which I recognised Pachycereus pecten-arboriginum that I saw in Baja California Sur and in Sinaloa on previous trips. But there were other ceroid taxa present that will need a bit more detective work for their name later.  
We drove on, towards the Nigel Taylor site, now off the 37D with a difficult entrance when huge trucks come charging up from behind. There are now a small number of polytunnels where, I assume, the plants used to grow.  We carried on in the hope to get back on to the Libre, but gave up about 5 km before reaching the Pacific Ocean, made a U-turn and headed back to Nueva Italia to find the Hotel where Ian and Cliff had stayed.
Today we covered another 422 km, exactly the same amount as yesterday and in the heat of around 32 C, very tiring.

Category:

2017 Mexico Ferothon

Thursday 2 February – Mexico City to Patzcuaro

Today would be a ‘driving day’ after a good ‘full English’ breakfast at the Airport hotel and a shuttle bus to take us to the Europcar yard and office to pick up our rental car.
We needed to cover 465 km (289 miles) mostly on toll road motorways, once we had fought our way out of the Mexico City traffic, but with daylight until 18:30 I thought that we could afford a small detour.
I had not allowed for two unforeseen factors:
1) we were given a brand new Jeep Patriot with only 32 km on the clock. In fact it was so new that it did not have any number plates. Instead it had bits of paper with the information, but these temporary plates would not be valid until 11:00 a.m. so our departure was delayed by two hours.
2) a brandnew car with temporary plates, claiming to come from Chihuahua is bound to attract some attention. We were hardly half an hour’s drive from the airport, just getting settled in to our travelling positions, Alain behind the steering wheel, me next to him as navigator and Chris and Jonathan in the back seat or there was a blockage in the road – a police check point.
We were pulled over and ‘robbed’  by some six policemen! The claim was that Alain had not indicated to move to the left carriage way and so we had to pay a fine. Alain looked baffled, sure that he had indicated but realistic enough to know that it was their words against hours and they had all the odds stacked in their favour.  So what is the fine for such a minor traffic offence? – there had been no near misses or damaged vehicles or personal injuries. 1,000 Euros!!! The amount was not given in Mexican Pesos, US Dollars or British pounds but in a nice round number of Euros! There was a strong smell of rats in the air. We have no Euros, just pesos. So their mobile phone calculators came out and an amount of  22,000 pesos was demanded in cash. Can we go the the police station and pay by credit card? No, cash here and now or the amount would increase! We were asked to move the car forward so that it was in line with a mobile office where the money had to be paid. This shielded the scene of the crime from any onlookers. Again, we realised the futility of protesting so coughed up the notes, which now leaves us short for the rest of the trip, but ‘plastic’ will cover that. We went off as fast as we could. My muscles tense each time that we see a police car!
And so we lost quite a few hours. Shall we carry on with our plan, to visit the remnants of a pre-columbian temple? Yes, as with other terrorists you don’t let the bastards win by ruining the rest of your holiday!

On the internet, the Los Atlantes de Tula in the State of Hidalgo, was said to be much less crowded than the larger monument in the Yucatan. No wonder, the direction signs were so poor that it was almost impossible to find. SatNavs have their uses but I’m sure that there is a better route to cover the distance from the MEX57 highway to the site.

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This is where I took the first pictures of the trip, including those of the cacti that were planted out on the way to the actual monuments. As usual, our time budget does not allow me to include pictures at this time, I’ll add some once I’m back in England.

As a result we did not get as far as Nueva Italia de Ruiz, but found very comfortable lodgings at the Best Western in Patzcuaro. in 76 km we’ll have caught up and if we have to, our itinerary is elastic enough to stay another night in Nueva Italia and explore for some more details on Ferocactus lindsayi. We already have GPS coordinates collected by Ian & Cliff who started their Mexican adventures a week before us, so we need not use time to look at places where the plants no longer exist.

Category:

2017 Mexico Ferothon

Wednesday 1 February 2017 – Amesbury, England to Mexico City

We’ve made it! Not that there was ever any doubt, but it seems that this time I was packed and ready to go about a week (or was it a month?) before the actual departure date. As some of you may know, once I get home I collect all these daily missives into a book in The Cactus Trip Diaries series, select the best images to illustrate it and then get a printed copy for my souvenir shelf. You can also buy them from the Blurb Store but with a large 30 x 30 cm (12×12″) page size and loads of images all printed on premium paper they work out quite expensive as a purchase.

This time I was SO ready that I had started this trip’s book evn before we left, to use as a planning tool. A picture from Google Earth showing today’s route and possible opportunities for a stop. I will use those images in my presentations when I get back.

As you can tell by me waffling on, nothing very exciting happened to day. Chris Hayes, from BCSS Somerset Branch in Taunton arrived in Salisbury by train, we enjoyed dinner at The Harvester and I then had my customary last minute panic and double checking if I had packed everything I thought I had.

By 08:00 a.m. we were on the road. What should take one hour on a normal clear day took 1:15 in light rush hour traffic so that we arrived at Terminal 5 earlier than anticipated. Jonathan had already arrived and was waiting at the Nero Coffee shop, where I started collecting some of the less useful trip statistics: Chris and Jonathan had each brought a toilet roll for unforeseen emergencies, with Jonathan packing a second one, just in case.  But where was Alain? Thanks to mobile phone technology we soon tracked him down – he had already checked in his luggage and had cleared immigration and security. We joined him and discovered that he too had packed a toilet roll. Do we think that there are no toilet rolls available in Mexico? I usually leave the UK paperless and obtain a small emergency supply in the first hotel where we stay.

The flight left about ten minutes late but we still arrived half an hour early at Mexico City Airport. They are building a new airport, with posters depicting the huge new building on display. Grabbed a taxi to the Ramadan Aeropuerto Hotel and an hour later were sitting in the restaurant, enjoying our first margarita, waiting for our rib-eye steak. By now we were running on vapours, struggling to answer some of the easiest questions, such as what is my name? I can assure you that this was due to tiredness rather than excess alcohol. As soon as my head hit the pillow I was asleep, thus completing the first day of the 2017 Mexico Cactus Trip.

 

Category:

2017 Mexico Ferothon

Sunday 1 January 2017 – Happy 2017 and One month to go!

Best wishes for 2017 to all regular readers of The Cactus Trip Diaries.

In exactly one month’s time I’m off with Alain Buffel, Jonathan Clark and Chris Hayes for another cactus trip to Mexico.

Like the Baja trip in February 2016, this trip will focus on seeing and photographing cacti in the genus Ferocactus, this time the taxa growing in the southern states of the Mexican mainland. We hope to see:

Ferocactus alamosensis subsp. reppenhagenii, F. latispinus and F. lindsayi in the state of Michoacan

F. echidne, F. glaucescens, F. histrix and F. latispinus – all in Hidalgo

F. flavovirens, F. haematacanthus, F. hamatacanthus, F. macrodiscus, F. recurvus and F. robustus – in Puebla

as well as F. recurvus subsp. greenwoodii in Oaxaca.

Of course, whenever a different cactus, or other succulent plant, should cross the lenses of our cameras we’ll be sure to press the shutter.

Our flights have been booked for a while, as well as the first night’s hotel near the airport. I just need to see if there are any good deals in the New Year’s (car rental) sales.

Although I have never been to these states before, so that finding hotels with internet access may be a bit hit and miss, I hope to be able to publish daily reports of what we found on these pages.

I hope that you’ll enjoy following us on our adventures.

Category:

2017 Mexico Ferothon

Sunday 20 March 2016 – LAX to Amesbury

Phew! Home safe, sound and tired at 18:00 hrs.

Empty suitcases to have my washing lined up to run the washing machine as soon as the sun hits the solar panels (if it is sunny enough). All pottery, wrapped in my laundry, got through as the six pieces that I bought!

Prepare to do list for tomorrow:

  • Check car battery (it was flat, after three weeks of no action; I should have disconnected the battery before flying out)
  • If needed, call Green Flag insurance for a home visit to get the car started. (It was needed and they arrived 15 minutes after my call!)
  • Check fuel for the car (144 miles left!)
  • Make doctor’s appointment to have toe checked out. As is often the case after walking in the desert, my toe nail (right foot this time) had come off on Friday and was still weeping, so, as all diabetics know, I need to get it checked out! Done.
  • Post the ‘arrived home’ missive for this trip. (Doing it now!)
  • Catch up on missing missives from the trip.
  • Start planning for next trips:
    • To Holland to pick up my sales plants for the coming season from Aad Vijverberg
    • Ferry bookings for trips to Cologne (Angie’s Mum) for June and September
    • To Madagascar once UK clocks turn to Winter time
    • Check clocks all around the house to see which ones I need to turn to Summer Time this coming Sunday. Hooray! Good excuse for a drink on Saturday night to celebrate! Bottle of Malbec added to shopping list.

It’s good to be home again!

 

 

Category:

2016 Baja California, Mexico

Thursday 17 March 2016 – around El Cahon

The approaching end to this trip follows the pattern of its predecessors: find a convenient Motel 6, visit friends, admire collections and visit a shopping mall to get those last minute essentials – in this case an additional suitcase (carry on luggage size) for my new boots and to hold the rucksack etc.

But first, in the ‘visit to friends’ category we met up again with Juergen Menzel at his home, to see the latest cactus novelties and to see the progress of plants photographed on previous occasions. Many plants are outside in the yard where nature takes care of the watering. There is a shade house to protect the smaller plants from the intense sun and heat. After 45 minutes in there It was just too hot for me so I escaped to cool down and to admit that I had failed to find the new Mam that I knew was hiding there somewhere. Once my body temperature was back to approaching ‘normal’, Juergen took me back in and allowed me to photograph his two plants that came from Europe.

It certainly is a very attractive and unusual plant that should be available at ELK next year, no doubt at a steep price.

I sat in the shade under a tree, mesmerised by the large group of Stenocereus eruca, the creeping devil, that started as two 1 m long stems some 15 years ago. These are facts that can not be found along plants in nature.

Juergen concentrated on showing Jonathan the mature Ferocacti planted around the garden – we need not have travelled all around Baja for 18 days – they were all here! But plants in habitat have an additional charm that is difficult to capture even in the best of gardens.

Thank you, Juergen!

Category:

2016 Baja California, Mexico

Tuesday 15 March 2016 – Ensenada to El Cajon, CA

After yesterday’s missive I received a timely word of warning from David Whitely suggesting that my brand new cowboy boots might be as complicated to get across the border into the USA as if we had tried to bring a collection of Ferocactus taxa home; both Pythons and cacti are after all CITES Appendix II. It is easy to be very aware of regulations applying to cacti while at the same time falling foul of buying a personal souvenir to relive childhood memories of wild west books and movies!   What to do?

It is usually best to play things straight and so, after a 90 minute drive we reached the border which at the Tijuana – San Ysidro on Tuesdays around midday has 11 lanes open and an average crossing time of 60 minutes (http://traffic.calit2.net/border/border-wait-times.php?type=passenger&sub=standard&port=250401)

As we arrived the ID check point the officer asked if we had anything to declare. I explained that I’d like advice on a pair of leather cowboy boots bought in Ensenada. We joined some 50 cars and waited a further 45 minutes to be seen. I explained yesterday’s purchase, where I had been advised that the boots were legal to take into the USA and was given a note, in Spanish that stated that the product was made in accordance to rules approved by CITES. I therefore believed that it was OK to bring the boots in. The very polite and helpful officer could not decide if the skins were real or imitation and took them away for inspection by a reptile expert. It took another 15 minutes or so for him to return to say that the expert could not be a 100% certain that they were real python leather or imitation but if I had only bought the one pair for personal use and had sought official advice I was granted permission to import the boots into California.

Doing the right thing seems to have paid off, but it is a good reminder that CITES rules apply to many things, not just habitat cactus material.

No pictures taken today although Angie and Jonathan snapped away merrily while we progressed in the queue to the border.

Category:

2016 Baja California, Mexico

Monday 14 March 2016 – San Quintin to Ensenada

My first trip to Cactus Country was in 1997, with my two sons, then 14 and 17 years of age. It had been a difficult time for all of us as my wife and I were working our way through a difficult divorce.

I remember gazing through the shop window in Tombstone, AZ at a pair of ‘cowboy boots’ that clearly cost too much to be considered a sensible purchase, considering how often you could wear such master pieces of boot making in the UK. There have been more situations where difficult to cost-justify memorabilia from cactus country were very tempting but the urge to purchase was controlled. Some two and a half weeks ago I spotted a pair of gorgeous python skin boots in a shop window near our hotel in Ensenada. In the hope that they would not fit, I tried them on. Perfect fit! I convinced myself that it would be stupid to make such a purchase at the start of the holiday but that if they were still available on the way back, I might be tempted.

If things had worked out different in Catavina we would have spent tonight in San Quintin and would have driven straight past Ensenada and those boots.

But faith conspired; Catavina had been full when we passed and so we found ourselves back in Hotel Cortez in Ensenada tonight. After down loading our pictures for the day – a cactus stop early on along the track to San Pedro de Martir (S3438) with many Baja endemic cacti – previously visited in 2008 as S0936 and a non cactus stop to wind down at La Bufadora – I suggested that I might take a stroll into town to see if those boots were still there. Damn, they were! Could I try on the other boot? After all, both right and left foot needed to fit, although it was hard to think of the right occasion to wear such fancy foot wear. ELK 2016? May be. Angie agreed that they were beautiful. Jonathan commented that the toes curled up. They are meant to, was my excuse.

And so I my display cabinet for Cactus Trip souvenirs and memorabilia needs to be rearranged to make space for a pair of size 11 python skinned cowboy boots when I get home. I would not be at all surprised if they should find themselves in images for my forthcoming UK ‘What I Saw Last Winter’ presentations.

I finished our last night in Mexico with another rib-eye steak and another goldfish bowl size glass of margarita to celebrate the end of the Mexican phase of this wonderful trip.

Stories are beginning to filter through from main land Mexico where our amigos from previous cactus trips have embarked on their latest adventures. Thanks to Alain and Ian for their updates and to John, John and Cliff for no doubt taking images that will want me come back to Mexico sometime soon. Hope that Finn can catch up with you after flight delays from Denmark.

Category:

2016 Baja California, Mexico

Sunday 13 March 2016 – Guerrero Negro to San Quintin.

More catching up to do as the unpredictability of broadband quality and bed space continue to mess up the best laid plans ….

We had planned to make a number of stops to see the transition of Ferocactus fordii to Ferocactus gracilis and this went very well. My back is still sore, so progress on foot is slow, but Angie and Jonathan spread out so that we cover quite an area.

We finished up at our usual spot to check up on the health of the Echinocereus lindsayi population. We found the usual 6-7 plants looking healthy and in full bud but there were also a number of holes that suggest that some recent digging activity had taken place. Jonathan was rightly amazed at the similarities of this Echinocereus with Ferocactus.

We had hoped to check in at Mision Catavina and then explore around the Rancho Santa Ines looking for the totem pole version of Steneocereus (Lophocereus) schottii that is reported from there, The rather abrupt comment from the desk was ‘no vacancies’, not even followed by the usual ‘have a nice day’! Itremain unclear to what extent these hotels are a cohesive chain, with the old names of Desert Inn and La Pinta still appearing along the Mision names, but the Catavina one remains the weak chain in the link.

The staff at Mision Santa Maria welcomed us almost like old friends – we’re in the same rooms that we had a few weeks ago and they listened to our comment that the toilet in our room did not flush on the first visit. It now worked fine. And it was great to enjoy the first hot water shower for a while!

I’ll add the full stop report for the day during the catch up phase back in the UK in a week’s time

Category:

2016 Baja California, Mexico