Thursday 16th April

We don't have to get up early but we are awake anyway.
We have breakfast and get ready to tour the zinc & silver mine. The bus collects us and takes us to an 'office' to get changed into cover-alls. It's not an office except for the clothes. We also buy gifts for the miners: a choice between coco leaves, drinks, no filter cigarettes, 96% alcohol, or two types of dynamite. Lots of good choices :p. we choose a drink and coco leaves. We get photos and then off to the mine. It just looks like a pile of rocks. I'm feeling a bit worried about crawling under there. After a brief talk we climb/slide down into the mine. It's not very high in most places and there are lots of plastic pipes. There are miners about pushing trolleys like at rainbows end along the tracks. We stop and see a miner 33 years in. In his 70's I think. Most miners don't live past 50's due to lifestyle etc. we go to a rest area where there is a large god/devil to whom they pay homage of coco leaves and alcohol. Our tour is only past an hour; we cannot go on to the colonial part of the mine due to cave in's. It doesn't surprise me. It's under a hill, been mined for near 300+ years and has very few built in supports that I can see.
I'm glad to be out. We drop off our supplies and get dropped off at the hotel. We aren't taking the tour to the warm lagoon, so we head off to the vege cafe for lunch. Only to be sadly disappointed. Out of four dishes the soup was the nicest part.
We walk around until we can catch the Mint Museum your at 2:30pm. I don't see any black kisses today. We get some money out if the ATM and sit in the sun until we can get in and buy tickets. The tour is of the oldest mints and the old Spanish technology well preserved due to the high, dry, cold weather. The most interesting part was how the world has got the sign for money from them, and the crazy amount of silver from the area. 300 years+ worth.
I'm tired and we return to the hotel to rest until dinner.