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CD Uebelmannia 2005

You can see 576 pics from my yourney, which I realized with my ex-girlfriend Nadia between August and September 2005. It was five weeks of traveling by buses, hitchhiking and on feet (sometimes 20-25 km per day in the mountains)... Everything was described on my web-story IGELIT, which contents 11 parts (every month one part). Unfortunately, there is no English translation, but you can see some presented pics.

Our things were stolen the fourth day...Everything was gone, only one small bagage, credit card and photo machine remained (and resisted...). We bought some important things (also blue plastic, in Czech igelit, which finaly gave the name to the series IGELIT) and traveled with very light small bagage, without tent, sleeping bags etc...

content : pics genus Arrojadoa, Discocactus, Cipocereus, Pilosocereus, Melocactus, but mainly UEBELMANNIA with names of sites (localities). You can see other animals, suculents, orchids, nice miner towns (especially Diamantina) and amazing Brasil nature...very good material for study of genus Uebelmannia !!!

You can order CD with seeds together. I use CD cover as a transportation box for seeds, too. The cover is protected by safety wrapping plastic which ensures that the seeds can not be destroyed.

O.K., stop writing Rudy !

Here are some exemplary pics with compressed quality. Normally one snap is 1,5-1,85Mb:

Uebelmannia pectinifera var. multicostata, long spines, Inhaí

Uebelmannia pectinifera var. pectinifera, Mendanha

Uebelmannia gummifera , Penha de Franca

Uebelmannia gummifera , ten minutes before sunset..., Penha de Franca

Melocactus spec., Engenheiro Dolabela

Uebelmannia pectinifera ssp. (var.) horrida

Uebelmannia pectinifera ssp. (var.) horrida, 7,5 cm long spines !

Cipocereus minensis, Datas

copyright M.A. Rudolf Krajca

DVD Uebelmannia 2006

I still remember it, it's only few weeks ago... This year´s "trip" was long. Sometimes it seemed even longer. It was a rainy season and sometimes it was raining constantly for one week. Days passed slowly when you just laid or slept in a tent at that time. Therefore it is hard to answer the question: "what about your trip?" I was three months i Brazil, which were sometimes amazing, super or good, sometimes bad, painful, sad, sometimes like a hell and sometimes full of fear... I left on 25th September 2006 and landed on back in Wiena on 26th December 2006...

I traveled with my mountain bike, which I normally use in competitions during the season. I know my bike very well and therefore I even did not think about buying another bike in Brazil... I found out something about Brazilian people (especially during this expedition) There is "another world" in Brazil, different from Europe and you should not trust the Brazilians...

I transported everything on my bicycle. Sometimes it was really an extreme load. Genus Uebelmannia grows in the mountains, roads are mostly without asphalt but with a lot of dust, boulders, sand... The Braziliens don't know the term switchback. Every road goes directly across the mountain ranges... I don't want to talk about the steepness of the roads, but I have never tried so hard hills in Europe !

But I loved it !!!!

The first month I visited locations of subgenus Leopoldohorstia which I already saw in 2005. We could not take pics the last week of our last expedition, because we had no energy in our special Lumix bateries. The thiefs stole also our batery charger...I made pictures of a complex of Uebelmannia pectinifera var. pseudopectinifera RNK 36, 37, 38, 39.

After that I moved to Itamarandiba to visit subgenus Uebelmannia. I did not visit sites of Uebelmannia meninensis (and rubra form) and Uebelmannia gummifera near the Pedra Menina and Penha de Franca vilages. This taxons can be found on the CD from 2005.

The flowering season is from May to September, in some cases later in October. Therefore I apologize, you will see only few flowers on DVD 2006... But if you want to correct some pics in some PC programe, no problem. You can add some flowers from other pics...(the same genus is better, I think so..) !!!

Other plants ? It was in Serra Negra and locality Uebelmannia meninensis, then I crossed the Tromba d´Anta mountains and left my bike one week in a virgin forest to find Uebelmannia buiningii. I was very successful, because I found all five sites of taxon Uebelmannia buiningii. Especially green form of Uebelmannia buningii RNK 55 was hard to find. Unfortunately, there was no path through the virgin forest. I suppose nobody has been there for many years. It is good, because the site has only around 50 adult plants. It is very endangered locality. I had problems with sun, insects, orientation and water... well, I lived through !

I took my "friend Arthur" and tried (after 4 - 5 days of illness) to visit location of Discocactus hostii. Unfortunately, I found nothing...Why ? Since I behaved like an idiot and I did not prepare enough theoretic information in advance. Well, next time, maybe. After this "sad history" there was one week transfer, I visited bigger city Montes Claros.

Two days later I moved again to Diamantina and it was rainy again... I spent some days near Mendanha to recognize a type form of Uebelmannia pectinifera (HU 106). I know 6 sites of var. pectinifera (but without var. depressa...) so far.

There are locations of Uebelmannia pectinifera var. flavispina 20km west from Diamantina. I lived in a hotel near a bus station and I could used my "light" mountain bike some days...

I tried to find the famous and mysterious plant of Mr. Uebelmann for three times : Uebelmannia pectinifera var. depressa (syn. montana), but nothing. Nobody from Europe helped me ... I stood only few centimeters from "cascavel" = the ratle snake. It was very dangerous, there are many of these snakes near Diamantina (others on var. flavispina sites, var. horrida, etc.). I recommend all cactus turists to protect feet and knees by special leather pantie belts which are also used by local workers.

Then I moved near Barao do Guaicuí to find Uebelmannia pectinifera var. crebrispina. I found around five locations, super, without any information and GPS navigation. I am going to describe some dramatic moments on my web serial :

Brasil s Arthurem ... (Brasil with Arthur)

Maybe, I will also have some time to write my stories in my silly, bad English... I have to apologize, but it is a fact. For Englishmen and Americans it must be terrible to read my English, but others, I guess, will understand.

Let´s go on.... It was essential for me to learn Portuguese. I used TV programmes to practise my Portuguese when staying in hotels (I can recommend, it helped me very much !), but still I found pronunciation very difficult. Unfortunately, nobody speaks English in Brazil. I could speak very little English in a state of Minas Gerais, but their English was very poor. Professors of English (at state schools) who teach adult students speak English like 10-12 years old students in my country. State education is on a low level, private schools are better in Brazil.

... I tried to find new sites of taxons, I used my tent, cooked on fire.. Sometimes I could not cook on fire because of the rainy weather, I had to eat dry milk, oats and pasta without cooking...I faced amazing experience with animals, insects, nature. I made many friends in Brazil after hard parties and big headaches in the mornings...

I lived in a tent, hotels, pensions, aircrafts...

I spent last two weeks in cities, last week in Rio de Janeiro. I did not want to go and stay there, but I had to. There is no possibility to change money in "small city"banks ( up to 400 000 inhabitans ! ). No, it is not a joke, it is a naked truth. I traveled with my bike from bank to bank and everybody told me:

"Go to a big city like Belo Horizonte, Rio, Sao Paolo... and change there !"

????? It was 350 - 800 kilometers of traveling. Brazilians do not care much about tourists, remeber this !!! It is better only around the coast, Rio etc.

If you ride your bike, you are very suspicious to home people. Only poor people in Brazil ride a bike... Police stopped me twice. I felt like in an "american film"...It's dangerous to ride on the right side of the road, because truck drivers are bad and unscrupulous. It is better to ride on the left to see drivers against and you still have to be very careful...

After three months of traveling, I was glad to see the Wiena airport ! I landed on at the Wiena airport and I was lucky to be in Europe again ! Two days later I was already laying in my bad with a high temperature and a flu (hoping it is no Leismanioza)... Finally it was probably the cause of acclimatization - there were 40 degrees Celsius difference between Rio and Brno city which "helped me" to bed....

I still prepare a new CD = DVD. I can promise now that you will see more than 1380 pics from nature localities, every with site and field number. I hope, it will help some collectors and lovers of this nice genus to determine the names of plants and the others will just enjoy the pics. I hope you will be able to see the map of this area on the DVD, if I have enough time to prepare it... I used special maps (a map scale 1:100 000 ) with quite good descriptions, but they were 20 years old. There are many new roads and therefore orientation, even with GPS and special map, is problematic. I can not use copies, because I have no licence and copyrights, maybe, next time. I plan to make a special map with my RNK field numbers in future.

There will be a link to a Brazilian cartografic society, where you can order the maps. The maps´ covering of Minas Gerais around Diamantina and Itamarandiba is about 60Mb.

You will see not only Uebelmannia but also genus: Discocactus, Melocactus, Arrojadoa, Opuntia, Pilosocereus, Cipocerus and other cactuses. Associated plants and animals like orchids, suculent plants, bromeliacae, tillandsia etc.. There are some pics with the author but you can delete them, no problem !!

Last year many of my friends complained, that there were no Brazilian girls on the CD. I bettered! Brazilian girls are very nice. They are a mixture of negros, white, Japanese, Portuguese, you can see...