We began our adventures today by finding our way to El Mercado-otherwise known as Market Square. We had envisioned a lot of outdoor stalls, but the majority of it was in two huge old warehouse buildings on the westside of SA. There was supposed to be a Farmer's Market, but that must be other than on Saturday, 'cause we sure didn't find anything that you might find at a Faarmer's Market! What we did find were shop after shop selling Mexican souvenirs (much of it made in China!) lots of it nothing we either wanted or needed, but just to help the local economy we did pick up a couple of gifts for some folks who will remain un-named! My favorite item was a Mexican Santa for my collection-complete with beard and sombrero. Crossing the street there were outdoor stalls selling fajitas, etc. and musicians playing pan flutes, etc. After listening to a pan flutist for awhile we decided to move on to our next adventure. No photos of El Mercado because the photographer was too busy looking at all the colorful stuff that we didn't need!
The next adventure involved driving north of San Antonio for about 30 miles in order to visit the Natural Bridge Caverns which we had seen billboards and other ads for and decided we'd give it a try-having no real idea of what we might be seeing. When we got there and purchased the tickets we were told that our tour would begin in an hour and 10 minutes and we could pass the time in their convenient gift shop which was also full of a lot of stuff we neither wanted or needed. After what seemed an interminable wait our tour-along with at least 35 other folks-was called. Our guide, Trevor, (probably a college student majoring in geology) took us down 180' into the caverns. The temperature outside was in the high 90's-the temperature in the caverns was 70 degrees with 99 % humidity-so the passageways and stairs and ramps were wet and slippery, but after a while we were relatively comfortable in the dim lighting and damp surroundings. Also had to get used to frequent wet droplets on our head, etc. and I wondered if the minerals in the water would give me streaky hair, but no-didn't happen. The caverns with their incredible formations were beautiful and strange while Trevor explained how the cavern formations were "actively" growing about an inch every hundred years. In Texas there is a statute prohibiting any guests in the caverns touching any of the formations due to oils on our hands, etc. This particular set of caverns was only made accessible to the public in the mid-60's-however it's existence was known about since the early 1900's. The caverns showed evidence of having had bat residents at one time, but for whatever reason, bats don't live there any longer. In all we were down in the caverns about 75 minutes and were sorry when the tour ended. The photos are of various parts of the tour.
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