Opal Mines in San Joaquin 2/20/2011

Heather and I went to the opal mine in hopes to get a chance to find the big one! Well, we didn't find any big opals, but we were in for the experience of our lives!!Hector Montes Montes, I believe the son of the owner of the mines, loaded us in his car, after much confusion, and we were off on an adventure. Since I had bent here before, I thought I knew what to expect, boy was I wrong!

We drove right past the mine I knew of and went a 4-wheeling onwards up into the mountains. We attempted several conversations along the ride with Hector and he with us. Hector only speaks Spanish, Heather French and English, and I have a few words of Spanish. So you can begin to imagine our trials! But we did understand each other in parts, at least we think we did. Finally we stopped, in the absolute middle of NOWHERE! and were told to get out. We blindly followed Hector into what seemed to be a crack in the mountain. Inside there were 3 other men. There stands Heather and I and 4 men in the middle of nowhere and us unable to speak or understand.. OK a bit eeerie of a feeling. We were offered tacos, who knows what was in them, that

that were being grilled over a fire on an old...HUBCAP!! We politely declined and were shown where and how to look for opals while the men feasted on their tacos...

Heather and I banged and chipped at rocks, sifted through rubble and found little bits of things. Every once in a while one of the men would come over, look down where we were and pick up something we totally missed and give it to us. You have to have eyes for this!! It is far more difficult than finding Herkimer Diamonds! But you can keep anything you find!

The men fiished thier lunch and come over by us talking and pointing. They showed us where they would blast with dinomite and told us they would do that spot on Monday., Well, Hector came over, said a few things we could not understand, pointed a lot, and the guys started gathering things. They called me over to watch and I realized what was happening. They began setting charges of dinnomite in the holes right in front of me. Hector waved Heather on over to take pictures. (Of which I will put on the blog when she makes them available to me)Yes, we were going to witness them blowing up the rocks! After they dropped everything necessary into the hole, and had the fuse attached we began backing up, just like in the movies! But Hector had Heather taking pictures, remember...quickly he said something to Heather and we knew we had to beat it out of the crack in the mountain. We went out and slightly around the edge and hid behind the car! Yes, as if that would protect the 6 of us! BANG, the first charge went off which sent the mountaiside shaking! We waited and BANG! the second one went off. The gusy just seemed to linger around. I guess that was to make sure there weren't any other things going to happen that they hadn't counted on. We went back inside where we had been mining and over to the spot where the charges were set. OH MY GOSH! They were so right. That spot had OPALS!

There we rocks strewn about with veins of opals probably about a half in wide and 6 inches long. They showed them to us, and would then pick up another rock and there was another vein! Beautiful, we were then quickly rounded up and told it was time to go. I think they really hit it big there and were afraid of what we might take, wither that or they had to get all of that picked up before the day was over. On our ride out, Hector stopped at an older mine for a picture or two....or so we thought. I think we spent about a half hour of Hector posing us and taking pictures. He even had Heahter climbing these huge boulders to get 'just one more'! The views from Hector's mines were breathtaking and we had sooooo much fun. When we got bak to town we discovered we had been 'miming' for about 3-4 hours!! This was no tourist kind of place, it was where they aactually are working It was amazing to put it mildly. Heahte rand I followed our day with wonderful lunch at a nearby restaurant, well, sort of, it is all relative. Below is a video of the older section of one of the mines. Enjoy!!