Drive to Jalpan de Serra (not for the faint-of-heart)

One cannot see much from the photo, but a few hardy men hang from a rope on the side of the mountain and with a sledge hammer and pick, mine the slate off of the cliffs and stack the slate along the roadbed.

I don't think that there is even a twelve inch gravel shoulder on this curve

A view of the road through the mountains

I think that they forgot to put a guardrail here

The mountain views were awesome

Now that we have made our fortune trading opals, we journeyed to Jalpan (home of the oldest of five missions in the area). We left Tequis, drove by Bernal’s monolith, and took a scary ride over the mountains to view the five missions and then travel on to Xilitla from Jalpan.

The road did have a few guard rails, but most of the time when you navigated the hair-pin curves, there was nothing between you and your maker, except a twelve inch gravel shoulder.

Opal mines in La Trinidad

One of the village casas where opals were sold in their homes

Did not know that dogs ate avacados, but this one sure did!

Cindy retrieved limes from the yard of one of the opal vendor's home

Resting at the public wash house after a tour of Tequisquiapan

With the arrival of our friends, Homer and Nancy, one of first journeys we made was to the opal mines in La Trinidad, a small village 7 miles south of Tequisquiapan. We did not take the tour, so we did not actually go in the mines, but we did go to several homes in the village that advertised opals for sale. Of course, being experts in appraising opals we snatched up the good ones for only a few pesos.