Mine Our Own Business

After breakfast and the pool, we walked to Mina El Eden, a 16th century silver mine that’s now in the middle of town. iola fell asleep on the walk, rocked into a slumber by the rough, rocky roads. What she didn’t know was these same rocks nearly ejected her from the stroller multiple times. She quickly woke up when she saw the “choo choo train!!!” we’d be riding deep into the mine. That train is the only thing she liked about the mine visit. The sobs for “more choo choo train!” didn’t stop the entire time we were in the mine. Take a guess if a toddler’s cries echo a lot inside an old mine. Luckily our Mexican tour companions were nothing but kind and understanding…to our faces.

There was a cool rock museum inside the mine and then a tour of the mine that showed how they extracted the rocks manually since the 1500’s. If I had any doubt conquistadors were a-holes, that doubt is gone. 1 to 3 slave miners died on average PER DAY. A slave was lucky to live to the age of 30. Meanwhile we were frustrated our child wouldn’t stop screaming, or might throw Carrie’s phone down about 1,000 feet into the acidic pool of water below us. Seeing pictures on Carrie’s phone was the only thing that kind of made her stop screaming, afterall. Funny the “problems” we have these days.