Day 5

Our day starts with an expanded trip briefing and Mexican Bingo. I know I will knock the beans all over the place before I can claim a prize, so I marked up my card in pen and saved the beans for our next pot of chili.

Then we need to fill and treat our fresh water tank, as well as buy some drinking water from the little watering hole in the hotel. This is our first experience of the process, but it goes smoothly. A young woman is selling embroidered clothing in the dusty parking area. I get a pair of cool white Capri pants, which should come in useful later on this trip. None of the shirts fits Felix’s gorilla length arms, so he does not get anything.

At 1 pm we carpool into town to meet our walking tour guide, Emiliano, for a two hour stroll around the classier parts of town. Emiliano is witty and informative, but it is sometimes disconcerting to watch him talking while his voice comes from a speaker carried by Ken somewhere behind us. 

Alamos is celebrating the Alfonso Ortiz Tirado festival, which seems to a 10 day classical music event, with associated crowds, decorative carriages, food vendors and the like. Emiliano describes the towns silver mining history, the profits from which funded the proliferation of mansions, the church and other fine buildings in the main square. It’s a good tour; my only disappointment is that we never see a stop light with a pedestrian crossing. Driving in yesterday, I had noticed while waiting at stop lights, that the walking man icon actually walks, and then speeds up to a run as the walk time left goes to zero before the lights changes.

Dinner is at La Casa Aduana, a restaurant in La Aduana, a small former mining town. We carpool, giving me a chance to study the local plant life as a passenger in the back seat. The huge cactus here, which are often taller than the trees, are senita and cardon, but I don’t know which is which. We are now too far south for saguaro and organ pipe cactus. I spot a large vulture which I am pretty sure is a caracara.

The restaurant building is the former customs house dating back more than 350 years, and the proprietor is Sam Beardsley, a US expatriate who entertains us with local silver mining history and anecdotes. He is focused on mining and the unfortunate miners, and provides an interesting counterpoint to the more politically correct Emiliano who described what was done with the extensive wealth produced from the mines. We had seen the huge brick chimney above town, which seems to be the only visible relic of the mines. Interestingly, there are no mine tailings, unlike at Green Valley in Arizona, where we started our Adventure. There, massive piles stretch for miles to the west of town.

Dinner is pretty good, and we get to chat with Lynda and Jack, 5^th wheelers from Canada. They have done other Adventures and we have a good time listening to their experiences.

Felix and Rose