Bread and butter pudding

First day in the field! Hooray! We spent the morning and early afternoon in a village called La Caja (the Box) which is northeast of Colima and about 20km southwest of Volcan de Colima. It's a lovely wee village with cobbled streets and orange trees lining them.

Looking down the street in La Caja.

One of the aims of my trip here is to visit debris

avalanche deposits which have been dated by radiocarbon dating of charcoal. Debris avalanches occur when the volcano is dormant for usually a few hundred years and the magma forming the dome has solidified to form rock. When the volcano re-awakens, new magma is pushed up into the volcano, but the pathway, or conduit, is blocked by the old solidified dome. The new magma basically finds any weak point, and starts fillingthat forming another dome inside the previous one, a cryptodome. Over time, the pressure builds and builds, until something causes the dome to become unstable and the whole side of the volcano collapses causing a lateral blast, like Mt St Helens. The trigger can be anything such as a period of torrential rain causing a landslide, or an earthquake. The debris avalanche deposit is the collapse, so consists of soil, ash, and blocks ranging in size from a few cm to tens of metres. The big block on the photo is about 1.5m. They form gigantic deposits. The one we looked at today was ~30m thick, 20 km from the volcano. Huge. I would like to tie these in to my story of the evolution of the volcano.

Carlos and I left Mini and Donaji in the village while we went in search of more outcrops along the dried up river bed. It was ridiculously hot and I ended up with a splitting headache. We ended up walking for ages trying to find the base of the deposit, but gave up in the end, and went back to the village to find Mini and Donaji. They were in the house of Mini's grandfathers wife (but not her Grandmother). We were offered meat Tacos and juice. How could I refuse?!

This evening, Mini's parents came by and Mini, Donaji and I (we left Carlos watching the Superbowl) went off for a drive with them. We went north of Colima towards the volcano through the countryside. It was really lovely with the setting sun, but you'll have to take my word for it as I forgot my camera! We got to a wee village at the top of a hill and Mini's dad bought me a dessert which he said is typical here. I tried it and I was thinking it tasted really like bread and butter pudding when Mini's dad started telling me what it's made from - bread, milk, raisons, cinamen… haha bread and butter pudding is a speciality here!! Brilliant!

A couple more photos from today.

Tomorrow we're off to look at more debris avalanche deposits - I really hope it isn't as hot!