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.