A JOURNEY IN BOLIVIA 1988
said they didn't know them, only big ones with "flores rochas". We drove a few kilometers
further and saw a boy on the land. He did indeed know the requested plants, but did
not want to point them out.
A little further we almost had to give up our attempt.
We had to cross a treacherous looking vado, but it ended well. And there the boy
from a moment ago cheerfully came to us. He had changed his mind and wanted to show
us the plants. A little further, Kik thought he saw a suitable sulco site. We stopped
and he found L. draxleriana and S. swobodae right next to the road. The boy knew
another place. While I was photographing the plants, Kik took the boy to the next
hill. That seemed to have been quite a climb, but S. swobodae was found en masse
in all kinds of colors.
We continued on our way, which was now rapidly becoming more difficult, with to our right a ravine many meters deep. When we stopped after some time, I only discovered how steep it was there. /// We searched again and found L. draxleriana again, but no S. purpurea. We were now at an altitude of 2850 meters.
Driving further seemed possible, but we did not feel like braving such a stretch of road again as before. We thought it would be better to go back. On the way back it turned out that the boy had quickly collected a few plants: L. draxleriana and L.obrepanda, some of which he had put on a stick.
The difficult ford was taken again without any trouble. A moment later a man was standing by the road, who said he could take us to yellow flowering cacti. Apparently there had been talk about the gringos. Yellow flowering plants? We immediately thought of Weingartia. That would be nice. The man led us up a hill and pointed out the plants: Echinopsis. He insisted that some of them would bloom yellow, some red.
As we drove on, we saw people standing on the side of the road who did not know espinas pequeñas. They had just dug a basket full with a few more L. draxleriana specimens. These turned out to grow on the hill near their house. We went with them to take pictures. It took some effort to prevent people from pulling up more plants.
Now we knew what a hill near Aiquile had to look like to be promising. So Kik climbed a last "good" hill just before Aiquile and found nothing again. But, not to worry.
Back at the hotel we were subjected to a lot of interest from the locals. The language barrier was not too great. As in Epizana, people understood that we
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