The road to Doctor Arroyo and beyond proved to be the most spectacular and interesting journey I have ever made. The landscape changed from semi-desert to pine forest and back again, passing through arid plains, lush mountainsides and ravines of breathtaking beauty.
A beautiful agave, most likely an Agave americana ssp protamericana x scabra intergrade as the leaves were intensely silver with a rough underside - a clue, apparently, to the scabra influence.
Further long the road, another totally different agave - smaller, banded leaves with prominent dark teeth.
Same spot - one of scores of hillsides covered in countless Dasylirion quadrangulatum of every size and shape. These proved to be a big feature of the semi-arid landscape in this region and further north into Tamaulipas.
This shot says it all, really. The cactus, which I believe is Ferocactus pilansii, was about 2.5m tall and hosted a colony of tillandsia - those grey tufts - as did most stationary objects.
North of Dr. Arroyo we found a decent sized colony of this agave. Not sure what it is - there is a macroculmis/gentryi/montana type look to it. I will call it Agave 'La Escondida' until we get a name, after the nearest town.
Totally awesome. Growing around 2000m or thereabouts.
Further north towards Galeana we were stopped by an army checkpoint - they were friendly enough. Then the road did all sorts of strange things and we seemed to be driving downhill for miles, deeper and deeper into a ravine that was getting steeper and steeper. Finally, as the sun faded, we came through the other side and back into open plains again to Linares, our intended stopover.
In town, Toby pulled over in front of a hotel. Suddenly a rather short policeman with a rather big hat and lots of red braid on his shirt appeared out of nowhere and informed us it was, in fact, a taxi rank. Not only that but in order to park there Toby had inadvertantly cut across the traffic. Both of these, said our friend, were Federal Offences for which we should have had our car and driving licences impounded until such time as we could appear before the court to answer for ourselves and pay the fine. But, thank heavens, the policeman was such a reasonable man that he was prepared to waver the official procedure for a small financial consideration. What a great guy!
So, getting out of town before we met any other such nice men, we hit the road again and headed for Cuidad Victoria. Got there late, booked into cheap hostel (£7 for the night - the ants were free!) and hit the tequila after a fairly epic 500km day.