PUERTO VALLARTA, MEXICO: Back in Baltimore, it’s snowing and below freezing. In Mexico, the blue water is as clear as President Bush’s choice: adapt to the Latin American climate or get swept up in a new tide of populist rage. Both the President and I are diving into the agua this March, making friends and seeking new opportunities.
Yesterday I drove out to the beautiful hills of the Sierra Madre mountains along with my colleague, Luke Burgess. Luke told me back in Baltimore that something big was in the works up in the back country of the Mexican state of Nayarit.
"Sam, I know you’re busy," Luke said, knowing that I would be in Colombia and Chile for the bulk of the next two weeks. "But I’ve got a huge crush on this company." So we set off for Mexico’s west coast.
In among the world’s most prolific agave fields (agave is the succulent plant whose roots are fermented into tequila), we found a gold mine.
Literally.
Slinging my Spanish, learned in several years of school courses and long hours with Hispanic co-workers back in Kansas City, we were able to make the most of Luke’s contacts and his expertise as editor of Gold World and Secret Stock Files.
With handshakes and greetings of "mucho gusto" ("nice to meet you") and an initial presentation of about two hours at the company’s office, we learned the amazing story: Spanish colonial explorers got the idea hundreds of years ago, scouring the Americas for riches and plundering what was on the surface. In the Sierra Madre, the gold and silver they sought was often buried not only within the mountain rock, but under heaps of volcanic ash as well.
The gray powder is still thick on the ground, and the fractured peaks separating the city of Tepic, Nayarit–where we stayed our first night in Mexico–from the mine site we visited reminded us of nature’s fury even as we beheld its riches.
From start to finish, we saw it.
Several years ago, an intrepid Mexican businessman decided to pour millions of his own US dollars into equipment purchases. He took his two sons on donkeys and then on trails that only upright man could traverse, where they hacked their way through the thick brush with machetes (the dense rainforest grows back along the trail after just a week during the rainy season). Chiseling and taking samples, they began to see promising assay results.
Eventually, it was time to build roads to the site. After securing more funding based on the promise of the initial results, the big machines came in and chugged their way uphill. As they cut into the earth they found vein after vein of heavily mineralized soil. This land contains high values of gold- and silver-bearing quartz, and in the new millennium of geopolitical instability and high gold prices, you know what that means.
Paydirt.
I broadened my vocabulary right then and there to include Spanish words for extraction and filtration processes, attaching the words directly to the images in my sight because, frankly, I didn’t know many of the terms in my own language.
One of the site geologists asked me in Spanish if I was Canadian, and if I was a geologist. I am neither.
What I am is a curious American newsletter writer with an urgent desire to learn about the hottest opportunities on earth, no matter how much ash they are buried under or what language the locals speak.
I am certain that this March journey to the south will bear fruit for my Orbus Investor subscribers, just as my 2006 European adventures led me to stocks that surged over 40% within a mere couple of months.
One of those companies will actually be present at the Biofuels Americas conference I will attend in Cartagena, Colombia, next week. Their presence on the other side of the world from where I first spotted their potential proves just how far the company will go for opportunities, and confirms my investment philosophy–that opportunity knows no bounds.
I urge you to sign up for Orbus Investor right away to get in on the newest picks in the Orbus premium portfolio as I dine and visit mines with the most promising firms in every industry.
You can do so here: http://www.angelnexus.com/o/op/874
Regards,
Sam Hopkins
