Mexican Field Trip

February 14th to March 2nd


I was fortunate to be able to join a group from AIAPS on a field trip to Mexico where we would look for cacti and succulents in the states of Puebla, Oaxaca, Morelos and Hidalgo. Our leader was a distinguished French botanist, Professor Norbert Rebmann, who had previously visited these parts and was able to lead us to a number of habitats from personal memory, as well as others from well documented research.

Our group in total was:

Prof. Norbert Rebmann, Field trip leader, Professor of Botany at University of Paris
M. Pierre Fontaine Treasurer of AIAPS
M. Michel Brossier
M et Mme. Gerard and Michelle Baudry
M. et Mme. Alain and Annie Legal
M. Laurent Breysse
Mme. Madeleine Esteve
And myself.

In keeping with previous records, I have organised these pages into a daily narrative, and a link to the pictures that I took on each day. At the end of each days pictures, the back link will return to this page. I start with Day 3. since days 1-2 were filled with flights and acclimatisation in Mexico City.

Day 3 – Wednesday 16th February - Mexico City to Puebla

Day 4 - Thursday 16th February - Puebla to Tehuacan

Day 5 – Friday 18th February - Mesa de San Lorenzo, and towards Canada Morelos

Day 6 - Saturday 19th February – Texcala, Zapotitlan de Salinas and Acatapec.

Day 7 – Sunday 20th February – to Oaxaca via Calipan, San Gabriel (San Rafael), Teotitlan, Los Cues, Cuicatlan, and San Juan de los Reyes.

Day 8 -  Monday 21st February – Monte Alban, and then towards Mitla via Yagul

Day 9 – Tuesday 22nd February – South West from Oaxaca – the Mammillaria albilanata day!

Day 10 -  Wednesday 23rd February – From Oaxaca to Cuautla via Huajuapan de Leon

Day 11 – Thursday 24th February – Towards Hidalgo, via Peņon de Amujar

Day 12 – Friday 25th February – After Teotihuacan, to Pachuca and Huasca de Ocompo

Day 13 – Saturday 26th February – Barranca de Metztitlan

Day 14 – Sunday 27th February – Venados, Metztitlan, San Cristobal, and over the mountains to Molango

Day 15 – Monday 28th February – Mirador Piņa del Aire and back to Mexico City

For the technical, the photos were taken with a Konica-Minolta Dynax 7D with 17-35mm K-M, 24-85mm f 3.5-f4.5 Minolta, 100-300mm APO Minolta and Sigma 105mm macro lenses. I shot these all in RAW + JPEG, and used an Archos AV400 40GB player as the store onto which the 1MB Sandisk Ultra II 1GB card was downloaded.. The images on this site were from the JPEGs, typically with minor levels adjustment and a USM of 80, 2.5, 2 as the camera is set up with no in camera sharpening. All galleries were created with JAlbum, and the web pages themselves created using KompZer on my 2.8GHz i% Quad PC running Windows 7.