You have to look carefully at the center part of this photo on the side of the hill. There are large cactus plants called cardónes (Cardón Cactus or Pachycereus pringlei,). They can be the largest cactus in the world, even larger than the iconic saguaro of the Arizona-Sonora Desert. There are four or five of these huge cacti in the Desert Botanical Gardens in Phoenix, Arizona. These are the first ones I have seen growing in the wild. This hill is on the Pacific coast of Costa Rica in Central America. This part of the country is a semi-desert due to the rain shadow created by the high mountains in the interior of the country. It was quite a surprise to see them growing on the side of a hill, next to the ocean.
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