Wednesday 14th November

Another delightful breakfast at hotel then on the road at 8am on a misty, drizzly morning. Billy and Neil were keen to visit Mexico City so the aim of the day was to do a little botanising then in early afternoon blast down the motorway to drop them off in the outskirts, leaving Mark and I to carry on plant spotting.

We headed off again towards Pinol de Amoles and a short while afterwards stopped off to look at a colony of Dasylirion glaucophyllum growing with Agave horrida in some numbers. In the European nursery trade, Dasylirion glaucophyllum is a name attributed to pretty well any dasylirion that has glaucous blue leaves, irrespective of what species it actually is – there are several that have blue leaves. These plants are ‘proper’ Dasylirion glaucophyllum – large, robust trunk forming plants that have wide, stiff leaves (both glaucous and green) and very different to most of the plants seen in cultivation under that name.

It was obviously going to be a dasylirion day. Around the corner and on a bit we saw a hillside covered in Dasylirion longissimum… which is another name that is much confused in the nursery trade following a reshuffle of the dasylirion deck a few years back when the plant everyone had grown to know and love as Dasylirion longissimum was renamed Dasylirion quadrangulatum. Dasylirion quadrangulatum comes from a considerable distance further north with a gap of a few hundred kilometres between them and this, the ‘proper’ Dasylirion longissimum (which was called Dasylirion treleasei for a short while). The two are virtually identical – this species is a touch scruffier, with smaller inflorescences and, if you get close enough to give them a feel, the leaf bases have residual marginal teeth.

Further on. We were aiming to drive to the top of Cerro La Laja which, at 3250m, is a bit of a lump upon which there is a disjunct population of Agave montana I was keen to visit. As it turned out the weather beat us – too foggy to see the road ahead right at the top. But on the way up we found a small colony of Nolina parviflora with this rather majestic 3-crowned plant beckoning us in from the roadside, with some rather nice looking Agave salmiana at their feet.

Back on the road, as time was passing. If we were lucky we’d get in and out of Mexico City before the traffic built up too much…then we got to a place called Ezequiel and our car was hit in the back by the car behind. The damage wasn’t much, but enough to make me fear it would be expensive. I couldn’t see the situation being resolved in our favour, having heard all kinds of reports about foreign drivers in Mexico being stitched up.

Luckily, as it turned out, a local police car appeared. My limited Spanish didn’t stretch to fully understanding what we were being told, so after a while we all went to the police station around 5 minutes away. After about 15 minutes a plain clothes officer arrived – he was the Commissioner, no less, and the only officer who could speak English. He made, or had made, all the necessary calls to the rental company etc and shortly filled us in with the procedure. A representative of the hire company would be joining us at the station in around an hour. Meanwhile, he offered us a lift into town to prevent us being bored! And then collected again once we’d had some lunch.

Which is what we did. Sure enough the Europcar rep turned up, it was apparent the accident was not our fault, paperwork was signed and completed and we went on our way. An experience that has totally changed my opinion of Mexican police – on this occasion they could not have been more helpful.

So – off to Mexico City, but unfortunately we were in the middle of the main traffic. It took us 2 hours to get to the drop-off point, a convenient intersection where there were taxis, We bade farewell to Neil and Billy, meeting back up with them in a couple of days’ time at the airport. Then another hour to get across the outskirts of Mexico City to pick up our road back north, then another 2 hrs to get to Mineral Del Chico and Hotel Paraiso, where we had stayed before. It was dark and raining heavily, the hotel was almost deserted, the restaurant closed. We drove into town but that, too, was closed. So we had a meal of whatever we found in the car – some crisps, a banana, an orange.

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