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I passed long, narrow valleys, eroded hills and mountainsides, meager soils, so sheet-washed and thin from being sluiced with rain, the water pouring across them and carrying the surface away. In the winding river gorges that Mexicans call barrancas, the clinging vegetation—yucca, organ pipe and prickly pear cactus, tenacious, bristling with spikes—looked strangely metallic. To the east was the Tehuacán-Cuicatlán Biosphere Reserve, cloud forests at the higher elevations, and on some lower slopes, tall columnar cactus in mazy green colonnades.
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