Mexico Trip - Day 2



Local flora

After a fitful night of sleep, I woke up to the sound of everyone else having breakfast. I showered quickly and joined them, though I will have little work to do today. The equipment that I need to do my work here is stuck in customs, and probably won't be here until sometime Tuesday.



After breakfast, we went to visit the mine site. Rather, we went to visit the future mine site, as no excavation has begun yet. It's just a barren desert, with roads carved into the steep hills, and exploratory well sites scattered here and there. The local employees had a little work to do, collecting latitude and longitude information on each of the newly drilled wells, but it didn't take long. The company owns other working mines in the area, but this one is just beginning to get explored and developed.

Mining Camp

We also toured the camp, where miners stay when there is actual excavation taking place. The camp probably holds 50 people or so, with 4 to 6 miners living in each of the small units pictured. The camp includes a cafeteria, laundry, infermary, and office space for the supervisors. I'd seen photos of the camp from the client's website, but it all looks so much smaller in person.

Among the features of the mining camp was a small core library, where all of the core collecting during the drilling operations are stored. Core is the column of rock collected during drilling. This type of drilling is slow and expensive, but it also provides a relatively undisturbed sample of the rock, which can be analyzed for ore content. In this mine, they will be mining mainly copper, but also have some gold and silver as well. This building probably housed about a mile of core.

Core library - each shall box holds about 5 feet of core

After the tour, we went back to the hacienda, so the local employees could take care of some computer work. Jim and I didn't have anything to do, once we had checked our email, so we decided to take a walk and explore the town of Tepalcatepec a little, which leads us to the Spanish phrase I wish I knew for today:  "Please don't kidnap me."

Jim and I only walked for about 15 minutes before a small guy on a small motorcycle drove up and asked us what we were doing. Honestly, we were just walking through the town, but we must have stood out like sore thumbs. We are several shades paler than anyone else in the city, Jim was wearing shorts, and I had on a tie-dyed t-shirt. I doubt there we could have stood out more if we were carrying signs saying, "Future kidnapping victims".

At first, I thought he was just a curious guy. We told him we lived here, which he didn't believe. (I'm hesitant to announce my U.S. citizenship in these settings, though my tie-dye may have announced it for me.) I told him we worked here, and he wanted to know where. We told him the mines, and tried to shake him off. He left, came back in a couple of minutes with further questions, and asked if we had identification. He was no police officer, but we were quickly realizing that he wasn't just some curious kid. We told him that we had papers back at our house, that we were walking back to our house now, and wished him well. He got on a radio, and was just in the act of calling someone to report us when some of our local coworkers drove up and rescued us. They viewed it as amusing, as we must have had a panicked look on our faces.

It turns out the guy most likely worked with drug traffickers, and was checking out the gringos. We are apparently in an area that serves as a border between rival drug trafficking gangs, and they routinely question and detain anyone who can't explain why he's here. Ruben, who is serving as our client contact, translator, and guide, suggested that we not take anymore walks through town without a local.

Mexico Trip - Day 1 - January 14

My temporary home

This is my first day of a work trip to Tepalcatepec, Mexico, where I will be doing some exploration work for a gold and copper mine in the area.

The day was a long one. I was up at 3:00 AM, packing the last of the clothes and supplies I'd need for the two week trip. I also had a second thing on my mind: making sure my 14-year old son had everything he needed for a trip to Canada. Ironically, the very day that his French Club left for Quebec, I left for Mexico. That's big news in the rjeffy household, where we really don't do as much traveling as we would like.

After a flight to Denver, I met my coworker, Jim, and we caught a nonstop flight to the Ixtapa - Zihuatanejo airport. There, after a painless trip through customs, we met Ruben, who is a local, and who drove us the 4 hour trip to my home for the next two weeks or so.

The scenery is severe and beautiful. We drove along the Pacific coast briefly before heading inland through a low coastal mountain range. We passed through dozens of small towns, with colorful names like "San Juan de los Platanos" (St. John of the Bananas), with venders standing along the side of the road selling nearly anything you could imagine. Close to the coast, I saw a group holding lobsters in the air so passing motorists could see the fare. Later, as we drove inland and the scenery became more arid, we passed a group of vendors holding iguanas in the air, to tempt our tastebuds. We didn't stop for lobsters or iguanas.

The front of our hacienda

In fact, we didn't stop for much of anything. We paused for gasoline once, and at a convenience store to buy water and snacks. Four hours later, we finally made it to Tepalcatepec, where the client has a home for the workers. Three local workers live here when they are on shift, and there's plenty of room for us two gringos to join them. Apparently, a housekeeper and cook stays here during the week as well, but we have yet to meet her.

I went to bed by 8:00 PM, completely exhausted with the day's travels. Jim and I are sharing a room and bathroom, which doesn't look like it will present any problem.

The Spanish phrase I wish I knew today:  "I think slowly in Spanish."*

*(This phrase was a favorite of mine while working in Chile. I used it to explain my confusion and stupidity so often that I hardly needed to think about it, the phrase just flowed from me naturally. Today, as I tried to summon the phrase to my lips by way of apology for not understanding the simplest instructions at the airport, I couldn't come up with it at all.)

Required Reading for My Daughters (If I Had Any)

There aren’t that many books that hold up to multiple readings, but I found Jane Eyre to be one of them. I read it for the first time about five years ago, when my elder son got it for me for Father’s Day. I’d never read it, but it was on my long list of books that I intend to read someday. (That list, by the way, seems to grow longer rather than shorter with each passing year. I just can’t keep up by reading at the same pace that I add books to the list.)

I enjoyed Jane Eyre the first time, but had no intention of rereading it so quickly. However, as part of a study I’m doing of British women authors, I revisted Charlotte Bronte’s classic, and I’m glad I did. That old saying that we can never step into the same river twice really holds true with great works of literature. Bronte’s work hasn’t changed. In fact I read the exact same copy each time, so I wasn’t exposed to new commentary or notes that I’d missed the first time around. Nevertheless, my life experiences as a parent in the last five years influenced my reading of Jane Eyre in ways that I wasn’t prepared to see in my first reading.

Toward the end of Jane Eyre, I was struck with this thought: if I had daughters I would wish them to read Jane Eyre before they married. Bronte paints such a powerful portrait of an intelligent, confident young woman that it is an inspiration. Famously, Jane rejects two suitors in the novel. When we look at her reasons for those rejections, and hear her explain them to herself later, it becomes clear that this young woman has the confidence to know precisely what she is looking for in a spouse, and more importantly, precisely who she is.

Not being the father of daughters, (I am blessed with two 8th grade boys), I still wish for my children to read the novel at some point in their early adulthood. I would like for them to read it for the inspiration coming to know the confident and intelligent Jane Eyre can provide, and for the pleasure of reading a master of the art at her best.