This was another day to enjoy the benefit of rest, but clearly Leo and I were not used to this and within minutes of breakfast were showing 'signs of stress' caused by not having anything to do. Juan solved the problem by suggesting that he'd show us the population of Eriosyce subgibbosa ssp castanea that grew on the estate. What a surprise, this wood covered area with agriculture openings did not look like 'cactus country' as we knew it.

I guess that it was because we were 'at home' and the previous days had not been too demanding, that Juan and Leo set off at a, for me, blistering pace. When we reached but after some 30 minutes uphill walk, we reached the spot (S726), to find another surprise. I certainly had not expected to find Eriosyce growing almost covered in a thick layer of pine needles that should guarantee acidic soil conditions. These were groups of big plants with mature stems of 30 to 60 cm (12 to 24"). Many were solitary stems, while some were growing in clumps to 2 meters (6 ft) in diameter, although it was not clear if these were groups of individual plants or an single, offsetting plant or perhaps a combination of the two. The plants looked extremely happy as they were, with plenty of fruits and seed, so there was no real reason to destroy this environment to answer our questions.

A few years ago, Flo had done her first cactus population study based on these plants, although she was not quite sure where she had put the results. Found them yet, Flo? :-)

The afternoon was spent reading up more on the Eriosyce that we had seen, as I really knew very little about this genus, other than possible IDs for some of the plants that we'd seen in the north. All that reading and doing nothing is obviously very tiring, so that I fell asleep in the sun and woke up with bright red legs, as these are normally hidden in jeans but today had enjoyed a rare outing in shorts.   

While indulging our other pastime - tasting some of the local wines - over dinner, we put some plans together for tomorrow.