March 18, 2005 - Van, TX (Mexico)
Since we all had boats and in Henk & Thea's case, own a marina, we simply HAD to take a tour of the San Felipe Yacht Basin. Well, maybe someday it's going to be that, but today it's got shrimp boats tied up, and some pangas. The smaller open boats are called pangas, and the local fishermen use them both commercially and for sport fishing. A lot of money and effort went into building this basin, and we hope it gets developed. There is a wonderful RV park right there, overlooking the whole thing, but it's closed. Our Spanish wasn't good enough to learn why, either. The park looked fairly new, had extensive concrete work, paved roads, full hookups, clubhouse and store. What a shame it's not open, or we'd have probably stayed there after our week at El Dorado Ranch.
Remember that big cactus on the welcome sign by the military checkpoint? Well, we're there. Only one place in the world these Cardon cacti live, and it's right here. A large concentration of them live on privately owned land, and the owner collects whatever the traffic will bear to get onto his land. The sign indicates it's $5 US per car to get in, and we gladly paid it. Or maybe Henk & Thea paid it. They were riding with us, and Bill and Carol were following in their car. Shortly we came across a picnic spot full of different kinds of rigs and people. Seems the old folks have a club. They call it the Senior Citizen Club of San Felipe or something like that. We recognized one of the rigs as being a VW variant from the RV park, and sure enough, it was Bob. He told us that every week or so there's a "tour" for these off-road vehicles, and today Frank was leading the group because he knew a lot about these cacti.
They're huge! And sturdy. And old. Some as old as 300+ years. www.blueroadrunner.com/cardon.htm is a website with a lot of good information if you're interested. There's simply too much for me to put it all here.
Much like the saguaro we're familiar with in Arizona, these have a wooden skeleton. One of the surprises for us was the way they grow in close proximity of each other in this area.
Ever notice how easy it is for short people to hunker down to look at things they're already closer to than the rest of us? Barb first is investigating some droppings we decided belonged to (or used to belong to) a burro, and then Carol is trying not to fall into another rabbit hole, while Barb is getting a better look at them.
Since Barb is about 5 foot tall, (5'2" actually) this cactus had to be at least 45 feet tall. And all held by this exposed root system. Amazing. And it must be relatively young, because there were no signs of an arm anywhere.
We took a long time to drive the 7 mile loop road because we kept stopping and looking at "stuff". And with 6 people, most with cameras, most with their own idea of what was interesting to look at and take pictures of, it was sometimes a challenge to get them all rounded up and herded back to the cars.
Lunch time, back at the beginning of the loop road. Bill was kind enough to take the picture so I wouldn't take up more time digging out the tripod yet again. That's Thea, Henk, Barb, Carol and me.
In addition to the Cardon, we enjoyed at least another 5 or 6 kinds of cacti while we were there--some you can "pet," but only in one direction!. Also, the trunks for the Cardons are called elephant feet, for obvious reasons (color, size, and shape). And the ocotillo were in full bloom. Barb found this bloom that had fallen off, and couldn't pass up the chance to show how very red it is.
We enjoyed seeing the statue of Jesus (we think) or some other Catholic saint up there. Bill had spotted it earlier while we were on the loop road, but wasn't sure what it was. All in all, an enjoyable day. Yet again. Is this a great lifestyle or what???