On January 8th
it was one of our last days in Mexico and what would have been a better way to
end the trip than touring Calica, one of the world’s largest limestone mines.
When we first got to the site, we were greeted with very warming hospitality,
typical of the Yucatan’s citizens. The first thing we did as part of our tour
was attend a presentation by one of Calica’s managers who explained to us how
they extracted the limestone, and why it was economically feasible for them to
essentially ship rocks to the United States. After the presentation we got to
take a tour of all of their facilities in order to understand how they ran
their operations.
I was completely amazed
by the scale of their operations, and was astonished to learn that they shipped
hundreds of millions of pounds of limestone to the US every year. Even the size
of their equipment was massive, and we learned that just one tire for this
truck costs over $10,000.
One of the coolest parts
of the tour was when we got to walk to the top of a giant tower that controlled
a huge rock crusher. We got to see how the operator controlled the machine and I
couldn't believe how powerful this machine was. I learned that this single rock
crusher could process over 600,000 pounds of limestone rock a minute and I got
to see firsthand how this machine threw around slabs of rock probably weighing
a few thousand pounds each like it was nothing.
After touring the
processing facilities it was time to have a little excitement; we learned that
today would be their blasting day and we were going to see firsthand several
thousand pounds of rock blown up by dynamite. We drove out to the blasting site
and received the countdown, and even though we were a long ways away from the
blast we could still feel the earth shake and see the massive explosion.
All in all it was a very informative trip and I thoroughly enjoyed getting a chance to learn a great deal about an industry that I previously had no knowledge of at all. This trip gave me a chance to tour such an amazing operation that was so grandiose in size and scope that it is hard to explain. I definitely walked away impressed with the people who put such a huge operation together, and now I can say that I have seen a dynamite blast in person which checks a task off my bucket list.
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