San Miguel Amatlán and back to Oaxaca city.
This is our last day and last hike. We had a good night's sleep and the temperature in the cabin is quite comfortable. For breakfast, seasoned steak and black beans, tortillas and coffee. This typical breakfast of the region is very tasty. Ernesto is waiting for us and he has swapped his straw hat for a hard yellow helmet, a helmet for the construction. And here we go again on small dirt roads around Amatlán. This village is very small, apparently there are 500 people but to see the number of houses, I doubt it. Yet they have a large building where are the police station and administrative offices. There is even a medical office with a young female doctor. We begin our visit by the countryside, the mountain and the woods are about 100 meters from our cabin. A little further, Ernesto brings us to an abandonned gold mine. The project was abandoned after an earthquake and the collapse of the gallery. We do not do more than 50 meters in the tunnel using a flashlight. The Soledad Mine (Solitude) was opened in 1910 I believe, and shut down around 2006. Ernesto takes us to the 24-hour ore mining plant that employed about 90 people in the village. He explained that the extraction process was very toxic because they had to mix the raw ore reduced in gravel previously, with mercury and then wash it with dangerous chemicals and water. Pollution was important because it affected the land, the water, the air and the hearing of the inhabitants. The remains of this factory are impressive and have a certain beauty. After more than 3 hours of walk, we will eat our last meal with Ernesto, it is almost time to go back to the noisy city of Oaxaca and our friends Hans and Tita. It seems to us we are to leaving Paradise, it is a place where I could live, plus they say they have no case of malaria, zika, dengue or chikungunya.
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