Yesterday, the 12th of September, we finally made it to the field again. After spending the night in the decent Hotel in Montereal at an altitude of 2600 metres, we set off across a pass into the lovely valley of Mesa las Tablas.In this area, which is about 2000 metres high, you find orchards with apple, peach, plum, and apricot trees and many carpenters. Mining is quite new for the area.

The hotel complex Montereal: the top images show reception and restaurant, the bottom the lodge

There we collected the key to a gate and made our way to a roadside quarry, where we did a geological section. While taking samples, we had two minor accidents. Dave Home cut his palm while catching a piece of rock and Wolf Stinnesbeck got hit at the knee cap by a recoiling piece of rock. Tommy from the Museo del Desierto in Saltillo and myself wer not injured. Well. Despite being so nasty to humans the platy limesone houses nicely preserved fishes from the Turonian, which is early Late Cretaceous. The fishes are under study by the PhD student Samuel Giersch (SMNK) in Germany.

Mesa las Tables and the limestone quarry

During a break I took some time for flowers. Just beautiful they are!

Flowers and a caterpillar of the Mesa las Tables

While working in the Sierra, more and more rain clouds came in and when entering the City of Saltillo the hell broke loose. Streets turne into torrents and the traffic almost collapsed. We were hit by the rain clouds of hurricane Ike.

Ike´s rain comming up, flooding Saltillo