The Cactus Trip Diaries

Just a quick note to confirm that Cliff & I arrived safely at Heathrow Airport, just one hour late as the pilot had managed to make up some of the 90 minutes delayed take off. Angie’s son Peter was waiting patiently at the exit at Terminal 4 with a bag of warm winter clothes – just as well as there was a 33 C difference in temperature between our take off from Salvador and arrival in England. Cliff was less fortunate. Saturday’s thunderstorm in Morro do Chapéu meant that he could not finalise pick up arrangements with his wife and daughters. He said that he would be OK, still dressed in shorts, sandals and T shirt, as we shook hands and reminded each other that we’d see each other at Gatwick Airport on 3 February.

Do tune in around that time for the next series of the Cactus Diaries instalments.

It was all supposed to be so easy.

We had driven the route with Marlon only two weeks ago and found that the airport was clearly sign posted and we left Marlon at the University Herbarium shortly after 8 a.m. so in plenty of time for John’s 11 check in for a 14:00 flight to Rio de Janeiro from where he would fly on to Miami and Newark.

But oh dear, it all went horribly wrong! Marlon had warned us not to turn off the main highway at the first sign to the Airport. It would take us through a huge industrial area around Salvador with no further signage to help you out. We were so keen not to take that first turn that we deliberately passed it – but, it seems with the benefit of hindsight we had missed the first turn off and so had deliberately driven past the second one, thinking that it was the first.

The result was that we ended up in the middle of Salvador, without any useful signage to anywhere that was on our road atlas. We stopped at various garages to ask the way, but were too far away, so that by the way the attendant had taken us past the 2nd turning left or right, out of a five minute life history in rapid Portuguese, we were none the wiser. I got out my GPS, but this had never heard of Salvador Airport, had no street maps of where we were and helpfully wanted to direct me to Rio de Janeiro, off-road. Argghhhh.

At least it showed us where we were roughly on the peninsula that has Salvador on the end, while the map showed us where the airport might be in relation to that. But we had become stuck in a suburb, and not the ‘best place in town’ by a long shot, so the doors had their central locking put on. John asked a few cabbies, but they were waiting for there fares and could not take us. The clock ticked on to 11 a.m. and past it. Then John spotted a taxi rank and decided to take a cab to the airport, rather than miss his plane and we asked the driver to drive slow enough so that we could follow in his slip stream.

We arrived at the airport around 11:45 and John went straight to the check-in desk while Cliff & I went to drop the car off.

John went through security just as we arrived back with our luggage, a quick shaking of hands ‘Great trip!’ ‘Must do it again!’ ‘Chile or Brazil?’ ‘Anywhere.’ ‘See you later!’

Cliff and I then had to wait until 18:25 when our flight was due to take off, and a further 90 minutes while the plane was waiting to get the go ahead from Sao Paolo to take off, after they had a major storm blow over.

The important thing was that we were on our way home!

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Yesterday’s rain had stopped, but it would take a little more than a dry night to get the Internet up and running again from Morro do Chapéu. So it is from a snowy white Amesbury that I’m posting these last pages of the Brazil Diaries retrospectively.

The mood was quiet as we headed for our last hundreds of km. homeward. Some 20 km out of Moro do Chapeu we passed the Cachoeira do Ferro Doido, the waterfall that had been dry as usual during our last visit (S1620). This time there was plenty of water rushing along the rocky river bed and underneath the bridge that we drove over. There is water falling at the falls! We agreed an impromptu stop (S1687) to take a look at the falls themselves. Photography was aimed more at snapping shots of cacti reflected in water and water throwing itself 100 m down the rock face than at increasing the number of cactus pictures in our portfolios. Last time we had observed an interesting overhang that at the time we did not feel like trying out but today I felt lucky, so made a little detour and approached the falls again from the other side, having left one of my cameras with Marlon. From where I was standing, I was completely unaware of the 100 m void below the rock surface below me. Ignorance is bliss and fearlessly I walked toward the edge to snap some shots of the falls while the others were snapping shots of me. The resulting pictures in today’s photo album were actually taken by John and Cliff. Marlon struggled with my camera, as I have the dioptre on the view finder adjusted to my eyes and glasses, so that everything appeared out of focus. 

So, on to S1688, the last image stop of this trip. We saw Melocactus salvadoriensis, Pilosocereus catingicola, Arrojadoa penicillata. The long thin narrow leaved Bromeliad that we had seen all over the place (Neoglaziovia variegata) was in flower and fruit here.

We arrived safely at Marlon’s for the last routine of the trip, getting the car tidied and washed before returning it to the car rental firm tomorrow. This turned out to be a most unusual and pleasant experience. Marlon had seen a cardboard notice at a private house up the road on his way to the University Herbarium where he works. It was Sunday afternoon, so we were unsure if they were open for business. They were. Marlon explained that we wanted a good clean up before returning the rental car. No problem. Did we want to take a seat? There were some tables and chairs in the shade in the corridor between the house and its neighbour, with a cooling breeze. Did we want a drink? Sure! Beer? Excellent! John preferred a Cola, somebody had to remain sober! No problem. Seven bottles of beer later, the job was done. R$ 40, (about £14 or US$ 23) covered the cost of the work, the beer and the tip!

We finished the day with our farewell to Brazil meal, where else but at the best churrascaria in town.

Four stops today, our last proper ‘day with stops’ of this trip.

Last night we ‘enjoyed’ again some very heavy thunderstorms, John and Marlon again woke up with the floor in their room flooded. But again, we woke up to sunshine and that was the most important thing.

S1683 was a location along the side of the BA-052 at km 345, some 12 km east of Irecê. It was the type locality of Buining & Brederoo’s Melocactus krainzianus, that has long since been reduced to synonymy under M. azureus. These days we could only find very few plants, all youngsters, no mature plants with cephalia. It would be interesting to track down any photos or notes by Buining and / or Horst about this, their collection number Horst 264, to compare the few plants against the appearance of this location at the time of its discovery in the 1970s. (PCL?)

Marlon tells us that local people seem to  remove the plants systematically from the limestone pavement, as their spines are a danger to both people and cattle that cross this area that separates the BA-052 from a  small but growing settlement. We can confirm the damage that Melocactus spine clusters can do to feet, with spines penetrating thick soles of walking boots and training shoes and having to be removed from the soles with pliers!

Other cacti photographed-for-the-record: Pilosocereus gounellei, Cereus jamacaru and Tacinga inamoena

S1684 was for another Horst / Buining collection, Melocactus ferreophilus, again, right along the BA-052. Not an easy plant to get to, growing on lose limestone rocks, very sharp to hands and feet. Not many plants on this mall site, but limestone rocks farther away and not easily accessible are likely to be home for more of these plants. Another day perhaps for a look. The other remarkable plant was a crested P. gounellei. We had noted how few crested cacti we had seen here, far fewer than in Chile it seemed.

On to S1685, a repeat for Cliff and myself of S1617 (370 m. to the south of our stop on 24 December 2009). This was to show John the form of M. zehntneri with blue epidermis that is still seen in collections under the name of M. douradaensis, another Buining & Brederoo name. 

We drove on to Morro do Chapéu again and booked into the highly recommended Pousada Ecological das Bromelias, where we had stayed in December as well. We were greeted like old friends, as was Marlon who had taken two tours here in 2008. We met up with Delmar Alvin again and while Cliff chose to have a rest, the remaining four of us set off to one of my favourite places on the planet (S1686 this time), the place where Marlon had found 16 species of cactus growing together on a previous occasion. This was my third visit here this trip! This time Marlon could show me the plant of P. gounellei that he believes has the longest spines that he has seen on this taxon. So out came the tape measure and spines were recorded up to 22 cm (9") in length.

The main object of the visit was to get that absolute killer shot of hummingbirds and cacti but we were too early – the Melocactus flowers were still closed. I walked around and eventually found a good spot with some ten plants with buds in front of me, all a similar distance away, the same range for my zoom lens. I also found a nice plant to set my cam-corder up for, but just when I was all set to go, taking some sample pictures, I noticed the dramatic sky, practically above us. And sure enough, rain was beginning to fall. I stayed for five more minutes, but as cameras etc don’t like water, hummingbirds don’t fly in the rain and the light was too poor for photography, it was time to admit defeat.

I found the others, but Marlon pointed at a group of half a dozen mature plants and reported that they had been visited regularly by hummers. The rain had stopped and I was contemplating setting up here, but then it started again, much harder this time, so that a brisk walk back to the car was in order. It is good to have unfinished business as an excuse to come back here again some time in the future.

The rain came down hard again, as usual, accompanied my lightning and thunder. I was looking forward to an MSN chat with Angie, to confirm pick up procedures for Tuesday – a last opportunity as on Sunday we travel to Marlon’s place in Feira de Santana (no internet) and on Monday we drive to Salvador Airport for our flights home (expensive internet facilities). However, the weather had knocked out the Internet in Morro do Chapéu, so most likely you’ll have to wait until Tuesday to learn about the end of a wonderful three month cactus adventure.

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