First of all let me apologise for the layout of this and the past couple of posts. For some reason which I can't resolve I am all of a sudden unable to position uploaded photos beside text. If anyone knows how to fix this, please tell me? It's driving me crazy!!
After the Daycare on Friday I took the bus to Queretaro and D & B picked me up at the bus station. Although we get two good meals a day at the Guarderia I had really had a notion for meat so we went to a Taqueria and pigged out. Experienced a first: Salads on kebab skewers?
This was a really delicious Ceasar Salad with chicken. We had Arrachera, Chorizo and Mollejas (which are sweetbreads, in this case the thymus glands of a cow - totally delicious so long as you're not a vegetarian) Tacos and a few beers. That's my meat ration for another week sorted then.
On Saturday we picked up the new car, a very nice BMW X3, and then headed to the Opal Mines at La Trinidad, about 45 minutes or so outside Queretaro. Mexican opals are entirely different from the Australian ones which are opaque. The opals mined here are clear with red, green, blue or orange lights in them giving them their name of Fire Opals. Since seeing them the first time I came to Mexico and finally finding a ring in Taxco last time I have wanted to visit las Minas. We were taken up the mountain in a very ancient jeep - four in the cab and the other eight in the back. It must have taken us a half hour to climb the very steep and extremely rough incline with a sheer drop on one side. We were given rock hammers( I'm sure there's a technical term) and taken up to the mine. They're still taking rock out of it so we were walking over the rocks they'd worked on.It was really rough going but extremely interesting. It was all in Spanish and I was having trouble keeping up which is why I'm not going to tell you how opals are formed, apart from saying that I heard Silicon, Hydrogen, water and pressure being mentioned. Our guide took us into the workings where the rock used to be dug out by one guy using a crowbar and the other hitting it with a hammer. Allegedly the guy holding the bar was given 5 litres of Pulque a shift so that he wouldn't mind too much when the other guy missed with the hammer and got his hand instead.
We then got to look for our own opals. We had to find a large rock, porous but shiny, which sounded to me like an oxymoron, and then crack it with the hammer. I was rubbish but D got the hang of it and, whilst we didn't find any opals in geodes like the one in my ring, we did find rock with smatterings of opals through it. And it was good fun :) After we came down off the mountain we drove on to Bernal which is a huge Pena, a solitary rock, which is visible from miles away. By the time we got there it was getting dark and had got very cold - 5c!!! We were foundered!
We got into the very pretty old town and quickly found a restaurant with heat inside and, unexpectedly, a guy playing piano a la Billy Joel with some classical thrown in. He was very good. We had soup to warm us up: Sopa Azteca for me; a tomato soup with crispy tortillas, Oaxacan cheese, avocado and smokey dried chiles in it and Quesadillas with the same cheese and chapulines: the dried grasshoppers from Oaxaca. They're tasty but you're finding bits of leg in your teeth for ages afterwards :)) I got back to San Miguel this afternoon for my last week here - can't believe how the time has gone. It's going to be a busy week so I'll tell you all about what's going on later x
After the Daycare on Friday I took the bus to Queretaro and D & B picked me up at the bus station. Although we get two good meals a day at the Guarderia I had really had a notion for meat so we went to a Taqueria and pigged out. Experienced a first: Salads on kebab skewers? 
This was a really delicious Ceasar Salad with chicken. We had Arrachera, Chorizo and Mollejas (which are sweetbreads, in this case the thymus glands of a cow - totally delicious so long as you're not a vegetarian) Tacos and a few beers. That's my meat ration for another week sorted then.
On Saturday we picked up the new car, a very nice BMW X3, and then headed to the Opal Mines at La Trinidad, about 45 minutes or so outside Queretaro. Mexican opals are entirely different from the Australian ones which are opaque. The opals mined here are clear with red, green, blue or orange lights in them giving them their name of Fire Opals. Since seeing them the first time I came to Mexico and finally finding a ring in Taxco last time I have wanted to visit las Minas. We were taken up the mountain in a very ancient jeep - four in the cab and the other eight in the back. It must have taken us a half hour to climb the very steep and extremely rough incline with a sheer drop on one side. We were given rock hammers( I'm sure there's a technical term) and taken up to the mine. They're still taking rock out of it so we were walking over the rocks they'd worked on.It was really rough going but extremely interesting. It was all in Spanish and I was having trouble keeping up which is why I'm not going to tell you how opals are formed, apart from saying that I heard Silicon, Hydrogen, water and pressure being mentioned. Our guide took us into the workings where the rock used to be dug out by one guy using a crowbar and the other hitting it with a hammer. Allegedly the guy holding the bar was given 5 litres of Pulque a shift so that he wouldn't mind too much when the other guy missed with the hammer and got his hand instead.
We then got to look for our own opals. We had to find a large rock, porous but shiny, which sounded to me like an oxymoron, and then crack it with the hammer. I was rubbish but D got the hang of it and, whilst we didn't find any opals in geodes like the one in my ring, we did find rock with smatterings of opals through it. And it was good fun :) After we came down off the mountain we drove on to Bernal which is a huge Pena, a solitary rock, which is visible from miles away. By the time we got there it was getting dark and had got very cold - 5c!!! We were foundered! 
We got into the very pretty old town and quickly found a restaurant with heat inside and, unexpectedly, a guy playing piano a la Billy Joel with some classical thrown in. He was very good. We had soup to warm us up: Sopa Azteca for me; a tomato soup with crispy tortillas, Oaxacan cheese, avocado and smokey dried chiles in it and Quesadillas with the same cheese and chapulines: the dried grasshoppers from Oaxaca. They're tasty but you're finding bits of leg in your teeth for ages afterwards :)) I got back to San Miguel this afternoon for my last week here - can't believe how the time has gone. It's going to be a busy week so I'll tell you all about what's going on later x
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