Zacatecas is off the beaten track, so not many foreigners come here, except for special events. One thing that Zacatecas is famous for is its silver mines. At the height of New Spain, Zacatecas produced 20% of the silver that was shipped back to Spain, creating several wealthy silver barons in the area.

Today, I had the opportunity to visit a silver mine, “La Mina El Eden,” (The Eden Mine). In this post, you’ll see a few photos, ending with a short section with video.

Fernando and Faviola, getting ready to enter the mine. The caps are hygienic protection that each of us donned before putting on a hard hard hat. The hard hats were necessary, not only to protect us from the potential danger of falling rock, but to protect our heads as we walked through the mine.

The ceiling was really low in some places, and I banged my head more often than not. I had to walk bent over for much of the distance, which wasn’t very comfortable.

Yours truly with one of those caps, in the gift shop, just before entering the mine.

Being in the mine took up a lot of time, so much so that Fernando and Faviola had to leave. Where they chose to do so was at a junction in the mine, where, believe it or not, they had a night club, as well as a gift shop.

As a way of making life easier for the patrons who wanted to visit the club, they had a small, electrically powered train. So it was decided that I’d take the train out and Fernando and Faviola would go back to El Bufo to get their car. Above is a partial shot of the train after exiting the mine.

An overall shot of the train. From here it’s difficult to get an idea of the scale, but you would have to ride the train with your head bowed, in order to fit in. Or at least, I did, being relatively tall. It was a short ride, noisy, but interesting.

[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.travelswithnathan.com/vid/mina/lamina_controller.swf?csConfigFile=http://www.travelswithnathan.com/vid/mina/lamina_config.xml" height="355" width="400" /]This video contains footage of us walking into the mine, of a section in the mine where water was running (I had no idea what it did), followed by a pan of the gift shop and ending with some footage of riding the train.

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