A Geologist went on the Railway

There are few better places to take in a sunset than at the beach in Mazatlan I visited Mazatlan Mexico on a couple of occasions, both for work and for a beach vacation.  Both times I managed to sneak down to the Ferromex shops and get access to the facility.  I even got to ride around with the hostler while he switched units around in the facility.   On my 1998 foray to the shops, one of the security guards was quite friendly, chatting with me and telling me what areas to avoid so I wouldn't get robbed.  Always good to heed local advice.  Another guard hassled me for a tip so he wouldn't arrest me.  I gave him 5 pesos to go away; he wasn't pleased that the gringo only had small amounts of cash.  Since I had permission from the Ferromex local manager he didn't press me for more.   On my second visit in 2000 myself and a coworker walked into the shops and wandered at our leisure with no questions from the security. The Ferromex workers we...

The beach in Veracruz that formed the eastern boundary of the mining property I was looking at.  Good place to have lunch. In 1998 I spent a couple of weeks working in Veracruz, Mexico kicking tires on an exploration property.  It was early days for the property as no one had found anything but a couple of boulders with gold along the highway.  It turned out there was something in the high mountains to the west, but to this day the property is not active due to political issues.  I actually revisited the property in 2010 for another company, so it was pretty cool to see what actually was there.   Memories include daily lunch on the beach as the Caribbean was the eastern boundary of the property, taking rock samples from a road cut with semis and buses passing by at speed just feet away - and coming one day to find a truck had crashed into the roadcut where I was working the day prior!  As well there was a nuclear power plant on the coast north of the p...