This entry was posted on 8/18/2007 5:29 PM and is filed under Mexico.
Daniel and Alberto come to pick us up early in the
morning to take us on a day trip to Pozos, about an hour away.
Once a prosperous mining town with 60,000 inhabitants, Mineral de Pozos
is now mainly deserted and has the atmosphere of a ghost town.
There are currently about 2000 people living here. It was
founded in the 1500s and the Jesuits came and helped create a huge
mining industry. Now it consists of a large number of ruined
buildings and many abandoned deep shafts.
We started off at "Los
Famosos de Pozos", a restaurant owned by 2 Americans. Bill, our
host, was most gracious and welcoming. He first sat us down in
his kitchen and showed us how they make one of their signature dishes,
Huitlacoche crepes. Huitlacoche is a fungus that comes from
corn. In the U.S. it is eradicated with chemicals. Here it
is a great delicacy and very delicious. A new marketing strategy
in the U.S. is calling it Corn Truffles. That should sell it
really well.
Here's Mindy in the Los Famosos kitchen eating some delicious fresh figs...
Huitlacoche
looks like refried black beans and has a very earthy taste. Luci
combined the huitlacoche with fried onions and tomatoes, rolled it up
in home made flour crepes, then topped each one with grated cheese and
creme fraiche and briefly broiled them. So good!
Here were our Huitlacoche crepes...
Then
we headed out to the mining area to see the large ovens that the
Jesuits constructed to melt the ore. That's Bill, our super guide
and owner of the "Los Fomosos de Pozos" restaurant.
There
was also a fantastic tunnel created out of stone that was long, narrow
and very cool inside. They think this was used as a way to cool
the ore when it came out of the ovens.
Here's the outside of the tunnel...
And the inside of the tunnel...
We
looked down into the shafts and many times they were so deep, over 1500
feet, that we couldn't hear a stone drop. None of them have guard
rails or warning signs so we had to be extra careful. The locals
were still talking about the American teenager who fell to his death in
one of these wells just a few months earlier.
Oooooooooooooh, it's deep down there...
We definitely watched where we were stepping...
Here in this movie you can see the guys do a simulated jump over one of the wells. Only 3 of the 6 guys survived the jump.
Daniel
treated us to freshly picked and peeled "atun" - the fruit of the nopal
cactus. It was sweet and refreshing and filled with lots of hard
little pits.
Look at this beautiful heart shaped cactus...
It was a rock collector's paradise. These were all copper specimens...
The
scenery was really interesting with the remains of the buildings. The
canyon in the foreground was actually man made. When they first
discovered the silver, it ran in a vein on the surface which they
started mining by creating open trenches - which is what this canyon
really is. As they followed the vein, the trench became deeper
and deeper. When it was no longer economical to keep digging the
trench, they then started digging shafts straight down to the veins.
We stopped back at Bill's restaurant for a delicious meal and a super concert from Kate and Keith...
Here's
Sopa de Azteca (Tortilla Soup). We would order it at every
restaurant and compare them. This one was good but not the best...
Enchiladas Rojas were delicious...
Being serenaded by Kate and Keith was a real treat. Listen to Kate by going to her website www.katemcgarry.com
While on the trip Kate's interview with "All Things Considered" on NPR
was aired and her new album "The Target" soared to #2 in vocal and jazz
sales on Amazon. Read and listen to her interview on www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=12752425
