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A JOURNEY IN BOLIVIA 1988

reminiscent of S. oenantha. Meanwhile, the other men found smaller plants, which we immediately thought we recognized as S. pampagrandensis.
At Rancho Pampa Grande we saw a nice hill. We asked a woman if there were espinas growing. She confirmed that and also pointed behind her. We climbed the hillock and in no time we found some very uniform plants, which should be S. pampagrandensis. We had just taken our last photos, when the woman came to us with a (too) large number of plants, which she had dug out for us.

During the search, the Swiss boys had passed us. They had written in the dust on the window: "Wir sehen uns später." It was terribly dry and dusty, although the road was not bad.

The road became winding and there was an occasional deep ravine next to us. We saw the bridge over the Rio Mizque from afar. We descended from nearly 3000 m to 1900 m. The slopes at this height were full of neocardianasianas, including specimens more than ten meters high.

At the bridge we met with the Swiss boys again, one of them had had a flat tire on two occasions. Cycling doesn't always seem to be fun.

After the bridge the road went up again: after three kilometers we were again at 2200 m altitude.

In Aiquile we easily found a hotel, "Los Escudos". It looked good and cost us Bs 10 per night. The owner told us that that the electrical power supply in Aiquile had problems. The generator could only supply half of the city, so the people had power every other night. So we started with a cold shower and no electric light.

Sunday, August 7th

We started with a cup of home-made Dutch coffee. This day could not but be a success. We felt fine and at Aiquile you will find everything! Our plan was to quickly find S. mentosa and then search for the sites of HS 13 and HS27.

We had understood from Gertel that S. mentosa grows on almost every hill around Aiquile. In good spirits we climbed the first hill on the road to Mizque. After an hour of searching we gave up.

We thought we had the exact data from the HS 13 site. Indeed, there was a small hill at the indicated place. Since it was the only hill in the area, we didn't seem to be mistaken. Here too we spent an hour without success. We spoke to a few people who told us that no espinas grew here.