Ojuela! (and some mixed minerals too)

A selection of mixed minerals, with a particular focus on Ojuela. I decided to visit the mine on a whim, and was graciously offered the opportunity to go into the mine with a group of miners. After only 3 hours of sleep the night before due to travel,  I ended up going down to the water table at the 6th level with them.  Apparently I’m the only foreigner to have undertaken the task in years, and honestly, I could barely do it even when I WASN’T hauling a sack of tools or rocks. The whole trip took hours—from about 5 PM to 8 AM the next day. It is one of the most physically exhausting things I’ve done in my life-- first hiking through cacti and chollas to an entrance, then going hundreds of meters down, shifting from ladder to ladder, climbing down (and later up) 60+ degree inclines, pulling myself up ropes and walking along dusty, slippery ledges with 100 ft drops mere inches away. And that’s not even considering the way up. It goes without saying, I definitely slowed those guys down, and it took a little doing to silence the nerves after descriptions of accidents in the very spots we were passing by.  I was just a tourist that day, these guys do it on a regular basis for work-- and I have to say, the prices of $5 hemimorphites and $10 adamites that wholesalers sell *really, really* don't capture the difficulty and danger that these guys undertake.  I've been to Pegmatite mines in Madagascar and Pakistan and zeolite quarries in India, but these are by far the most insane working conditions I’ve seen yet, walking through the shafts and scaling the walls of a mine mostly abandoned 100 years ago. 

In the interest of full disclosure, I'll add that none of these were collected that day—they only found some crappy rosasite on that excursion.  Also…I lacked the skills to collect anything on my own without shattering it. (And now for the shameless self-promotion:) At the same time,  because I was able to get these things so close to the source, you'll probably find my prices to be much cheaper than elsewhere-- particularly for the austinites, which I do believe are pretty damn exceptional. And have a look at that quartz cluster!