A JOURNEY IN BOLIVIA 1988
sometimes found to have a diameter of up to 20 cm. They insisted that some plants
bloomed red and others yellow. There were hardly any differences in appearance. Although,
if you looked closely? After a long look we thought it possible that some of the
plants were Weingartia.
Overjoyed with this "find" we drove back to Sucre in great
mood. When we arrived, however, we got another surprise: the driver had recalculated
the fee and thought that we had to pay Bs 40 more, because the pare (= toll) had
been disappointing, a headlight had been stolen from him and he had incurred costs
for a stay overnight and food. A somewhat fierce discussion followed, in which it
turned out that we had already chatted quite a bit in Spanish. As punishment for
his bad intentions, he got another flat tire. From our side, we understood the high-
After this trip and a very welcome shower it seemed worthwhile to have another pizza. We had only just made our way to the restaurant when the charrango vendor approached us again. He started with $ 40. We offered $ 20 again. After dinner he resurfaced and to break the deadlock we now offered Bs 50, which is pretty much the equivalent of $ 20. At one point, the offer was accepted, although the seller didn't look very happy. He probably needed money in the short term. In the hotel, the market value of the instrument was estimated at Bs 80,.
To make the party complete, we bought a bottle of "Eres Plumas", a kind of plum gin, which by the way will not become one of my favourite drinks.
Friday, August 19th
We had breakfast with a Dutch lady, who travelled through Bolivia for two months.
Actually we had no plans yet, so we took another look at the four wheel drive, which we would rent. It looked just like that: disassembled from the front.
We went back to the hotel and hung out in the shade, because it was very hot. We
had not yet tried heading towards Los Alamos. We hailed a taxi and agreed on a price.
The driver had never heard of Barranca and Los Alamos, but he thought he could find
it through questions. That worked.
After about 12 km we went up a pass. This indeed
turned out to be the Barranca pass. Here should be S. vasqueziana. There was brown
rock on this pass. In the crevices between these rocks we indeed found these plants,
yellow to brown spined.
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