I am sure it sounds odd to wake up in a public parking lot in a city, slide open the side door and follow your eager dog out into a fresh new day. All I can say is you get used to it.
Kids walk to school, by themselves. Their parents go to work. No one seems to notice you.
As the city wakes to another day no one cares about the foreigners sleeping in their parking lot in their “casa rodante” a rolling house, which is what Mexicans call an RV. Oddly enough they haven’t threatened us or robbed us so far!
Layne sleeps in in the morning while Rusty and I go for a walk. If I’m lucky there’ll be hot tea when I get back.
He sniffs around cautiously, ready to be ambushed and often reluctant to walk in certain directions if he figures there’s a dog over there.
Most Mexican dogs have homes though only a few are coddled the way we fuss over ours. They are let out of the garden in the morning and they roam the streets not taking kindly to outsiders like Rusty.
I follow his lead with my camera at the ready and sometimes I see things I like to frame.
And he does attract attention:
When he’s dropped his morning eggs which I pick up religiously as though we were in the US because I can’t imagine Mexicans like walking in shit, he chooses the moment to head home where if I’m lucky madam is awake and as I said the tea is hot.
On a couple of occasions I haven’t taken my camera with me and I always regret it. Real Del Monte has some architecture but where we were wasn’t that interesting around the parking lot so I did my best to look up.
The bad news was the day before the cabin air conditioning had stopped blowing. The fan was going but the vents were closed so I figured it was something mechanical. In the meantime we ran the rooftop air and opened the cabin vents in our feet and got by. I had work to do.
Luckily we had a strong cell signal on our Verizon phones and I could do some research. The consensus online was to remove the two passenger glove boxes and lubricate the vent switch.
With no confidence in the outcome I started disassembling the upper and lower gloveboxes and carefully setting aside the screws. Layne sits here and I didn’t want her staring at the results of my incompetence if I got it wrong. After days of wild camping the van was a mess of dog hairs (bloody Rusty) and dust (bloody volcano) but we were already taking about waiting till Oaxaca to do a thorough spring clean.
Much to my astonishment I succeeded in switching the vent and lubricating it not with grease but with Boeshield spray so I’ll probably have to do it again. But for now we have a/c. Color me amazed. Time to go mining.
First back to Pachuca to the curiously naked mineral archives half an hour away down the miserably rough road. Mexico has a policy it seems of making tourists suffer crap roads to their destinations.
Pachuca old town is narrow streets and large buses. I politely held back while the commuters with appointments pushed forward, as you do.
Our guide Marvalla took us through the exhibit halls meticulously laid out which are part of the state archive of mining. All mining records are stored here.
The exhibits illustrate four hundred years of mining for ore. Basically the miners were slaves used and abused by Spanish colonial governors and they dug rocks out of the ground. The ore was pulverized in pursuit of whatever precious metals were hidden within.
The Cornish miners had tapped out the tin mines in England and cane here to make a fortune after the Mexicans had won independence. Sure they brought pasties, easy food to hold in grubby hands deep underground. But they also brought fixed eight hour days with hour long lunch breaks, safety equipment, weekends and holidays and football to enjoy on the weekends off work.
In the 20th century the Americans came with even more modern equipment, including electricity, and they ran the monies till the Mexican government nationalized them after World War Two. The mines closed in 2005, tapped out.
Part Two was a walk along a mine tunnel to explore what it was like to dig ore at the Acosta Mine in Real Del Monte.
We wore face masks and hard hats and followed our Guillermo into the horizontal shaft.
The floor was smooth and there were electric lights but the roof was jagged and low and occupational safety and health was miles away. The experience was raw.
It looked like Rick to me but it was ore ready to be mined.
They carried 150 pound drills to dig holes in the rock to make a place for dynamite.
The toilet with a bucket of lime. Day shift had a fun trick for night shift, they put rocks in the crap to make the bucket impossibly heavy. You can imagine the machismo enlivening the hardest job in the world.
We were 450 meters inside the mountain and we got to sit for a while and enjoy the total darkness when the lights went out. Guillermo used a lighter to replicate the feeble lights the miners worked by.
I was glad to get back out.
We asked and they gave us permission to spend the night in their parking lot, away from the city.
Better views than downtown and despite some barking dogs a good nights sleep.
