Guanajuato was originally founded based on many productive mines in the area. From across the valley we had seen the huge structure and wondered what it was.
Turns out it was part of the Reyes mine - one of the largest and most productive silver mines. The mine is still in use today. So we figured we would go take a look and had a cab driver bring us to the outskirts of Guanajuato to a suburb called Valencia to take a look. He dropped us off in front of this church:
As soon as we got out of the cab, a guy came up and tried to convince us (mostly in Spanish) to come visit his mine. Turns out there are a number of smaller mines in the area. We told him, no, we wanted to get lunch first but we could come back later. We headed off to find a restaurant. But the guy kept after us and switched to trying to tell us the direction we were headed was "no pass" meaning we were going the wrong way. He kept pointing for us to go around this one corner. So we followed his direction, but quickly discovered it was a dead end - where his mine was located. At this point he was walking a few feet behind us and we could hear him whistling and we could hear other men whistling back from hidden locations. Melissa says quietly to Dave, "I feel like we are being herded into a blind alley". Dave too had heard the whistling communications and gotten concerned we were walking into an ambush of some kind. So he had separated from Melissa by about 10 feet - better there be two targets, rather than one. But we quickly pulled an about face and headed out of there will all due haste. We didn't go back.
We did eventually visit the large mine which was pretty cool.
Later that night we had dinner at Los Campos restaurant, #2 on Trip Advisor. When we went in, the restaurant owner came out to greet us. He was a Canadian who had married a Mexican woman and they had just opened the restaurant a few weeks ago. Melissa told him it was impressive they had reached #2 within such a short amount of time. He said that their goal was to be in the top 20 within the first year. But to have hit #2 within a few weeks was quite a shock. They didn't even have their liquor license yet.