Saguaro Cacti fill Valley of the Giants

Hey, hombre...  Necesitamos bebidas...we need lots of liquid refreshment for our trip into the desert in search of the world's largest cactus.  It's Christmas vacation, and we want to be alive to meet year 2012.

We followed a dirt road to a rusty piece of metal fence guarded by a cartoonish Mexican pirate who took $10 to let us pass.  "Dirt roads" in the area of San Felipe are really loose sand tracks, so the level of interest was high in whether we'd survive the trip.  But since Mexico chopped down the biggest cactus (17 meters high and 10 tons heavy) and shipped it to Spain in 1992 for the International Exposition, Rancho Punta Estrella has become a curiosity.  How did something so big grow here on this dry, dry Rancho?  Time....maybe 200 years of it.  How did it get to Spain?  On a Russian jumbo jet.

The natives love the fruit of the Gigantic Sahuaro.  It tastes like a fig and is juicy.  So the Papago Indians learned to dry it, make candy, marmalade, syrup and alcoholic beverages...used as "ceremonial wine".  But you have to beat the coyotes, ants and birds, who also love to feast on it.  A Saguaro produces 20 to 40 million seeds in its lifetime but is lucky to get a baby or two out of it.  Saguaros grow slowly and need the protection of a "nurse plant" such as a bush or small tree when they are young. It takes about 15 years for a young saguaro to reach one foot in height, and 40 years to reach ten feet in height. It is about then that they begin to bloom.

The gatekeeper gave us a sheet that said it took 50 years to grow as tall as our son, Newel, and 75 years before it gets arms and produces its first seeds.  So we made a game of trying to guess how old the above baby saguaros might be. 

We did some cross-country hiking, which made us water hungry, so we put in some beach combing time.  Karen was going to use her special shells to decorate picture frames...which is a great souvenir idea.

We continued our journey along the beach and got a lesson on how to quickly separate a fish from its bones.  It made us hungry enough to stop for hot chocolate and deep-fried churros.  The drink was as thick as honey and the churros were dense with well-used grease.  Within 30 minutes I was not well, but everyone else was ready to start eating all over.