Geology!

Yesterday we headed to the south eastern corner of the island to tour an old iron mining site. Michael agrees with me that it was pretty cool, although I was definitely nerding out a bit more over the geology of the area. The area is pretty remote from anything (and "anything" on this island is still pretty small), and so the drive out there was gorgeous and a little bit adventurous.
   Although the mine is currently non-operational, a substantial amount of the iron ore deposit - a bunch of magnetite, which is the highest iron content ore - still remains, so the mine is held as a strategic national reserve. The tour was neat - they bused us down to the mine entrance, right by the sea, and just sort of let us loose for a bit before the tour guide showed up. We didn't really know what was going on at that point, so we just wandered around the beach and I got really excited about the all the mineral samples just lying around. Eventually the italian-speaking guide showed up, and off we went - fortunately with audioguides to give us a little bit of context. I really wish I spoke italian for the tour, because as is always the case, it was clear that there was a lot more information and anecdotes from the guide as compared to the tapes. The tour took us underground through some of the original shafts and to the two major ore excavation sites, 24 m below ground. I spent most of my time shining my flashlight on the walls and inspecting the mineral deposits, so I mostly have pictures of rocks today.

This is a two way road, apparently.

The views were spectacular. And kind of reminded me of Hwy 1.

No more pavement, still technically two "lanes".

First view of the old mine shafts.

Slightly abandoned looking.

I was very excited about all the rocks here. The area is particularly complex geologically, so there were a lot of different rock types all jumbled together after many series of tectonic events, magmatism, and metamorphism. Somehow I didn't take a picture to illustrate that this is a beach and the sea is just off to the right.

Here, have all the pictures of rocks. This is lepidolite (purple) rich schist (a metamorphic rock) with carbonate (white). It was more purple in person.

Pegmatitic quartz veins cutting through the schist.

 Crystalline serpentine. Parts of the bedrock here is ancient ocean floor shoved up onto land, so there are all sorts of cool minerals.

Then we went underground, into the mine.

I didn't realize how blurry this picture was, but it actually captures the spirit of the steps quite well, although it underplays how wet everything was.

Iron oxides and salts

Little magnetite crystals.

I thought the staining was pretty.

No scale here... but this is the wall of a massive cavern that was excavated to get at one of the primary ore bodies. It was huge and dark and pretty awe inspiring.

Turns out my phone takes pretty good night pictures. It was way darker than this looks.

The other massive ore body cavern, with actual sunlight, because a calculation error caused them to accidentally collapse the roof, 24 m above. Apparently it was one of the only major mishaps in the modern mine.

More of the large hole in the earth.

Back at the surface - limonite, another valuable iron ore. But with all the magnetite around it's not sought after.

Appreciating flowers on the drive back home.

More views.

I spent the rest of the afternoon on the beach by the conference resort... there's a sailing ship in the harbor?