This morning we went on an adventure that I'm sure most people will never have the privilege of doing. We were taken on a tour of a real, working South African gold mine and it was pretty intense. This is certainly not something they would ever allow you to do in the US because it could be a very dangerous thing to do.
The first photo above is a picture we took in our gold mining gear before we went down. Unfortunately Robin was unable to do the tour with us this morning because she has asthma and the conditions underground are too harsh for anyone with any type of medical condition. We had to wear a hard hat with a lamp on it, coveralls, rubber boots, and a belt. Thank goodness for the rubber boots because there is a lot of muck and water in the mine. They use a lot of water for cleaning and loosening the rock, plus of course they need it for drinking. There are a lot of pipes down there that carry water.
The second photo is of us in the elevator on the way down to the tunnel we were touring. We went down to level 6 which was over a mile and a half underground. The elevator was fast though, it only took us a few minutes to get down there. It's a cool elevator that has three levels. Each level can hold 32 people. On the way down, as you can see in the photo it was just our group (and I think one other guy) in the elevator, but on the way up we were packed like sardines in there with a bunch of miners. It was kind of crazy. We couldn't understand anything they were saying other than we kept hearing the word "Americans". Once we got down to level 6 we walked a couple of miles through the tunnels (which have already been mined out) to what they call the "face" of the mine. That's the area they are currently mining. It's wear they chip away the ore and remove the pieces from the mine to get the gold out. Apparently a mine is considered profitable if they get 3 grams of gold from ever ton of ore they remove. We had to crawl up a hill of rumble to get to where they were working. It was extremely hot and we were all dripping with sweat. We were shocked that they allowed us to go that far inside.
The last photo is of Mike (the safety manager who gave us the tour), Steve, and Bart when we reached the face of the mine. You can see how hot they were and how tight the space was that we were in. It was certainly an experience we'll never forget. And it really made us all appreciate the jobs we have back home because there is NO way any of us would want to be a miner and be stuck down there for 10-12 hours at a time in those conditions. It also makes you understand why gold is so expensive. What you have to go through to make gold is very intense and dangerous work.
So that was our first adventure of the day, but there was more... much more.
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