On our way up the hill I made a point of stopping at the cluster of big agave plants at the foot of the hill. They really are enormous, and I wouldn´t be surprised if bigger ones exist. I´m aware that I am going on about a plant again, but this one really deserves a mention. I mean look how big it is! And I´m talking about the height without the flower.
The Agave family spreads over quite a number of plants. I wonder if they are somehow also related to pineapples at a distance, which also grow in the ground with blue-grey spines. If you look at the Agaves they chop up, they have a pineapple like core as well. You can vaguely make this out from the photo directly above where the dead leaves have died away. They are chopped up a lot, these plants. Most famously they are made into Tequila, but Agave syrup is also widely used sugar substitute. Amoung other things they can also be turned into paper, biofuel and apparently musical instruments. They look very at home here in the desert landscape, a place that could easily be in Arizona or down into Mexico, reason being that they were probably shipped over by some green-fingered conquistadores when they took a liking to the Americas. The original name for this plant is Mezcal, which since gave its name to the top Tequila.
Nora and I then climbed the mountain almost to the very top, though it started to look a bit perilous for a five year old despite her very nice indeed Quechua boots (name a brand after an indigenous South American Language? Why not!). Here´s a vista:
Looking down on the house.
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