..once the Atacama coughs me up.
The endless Chilean desert has claimed me this week. Five days tooling around the Atacama with 2 fellow geologists is a great way to avoid the zombie-market-COVID-19-toilet-paper apocalypse.
The three of us have been self isolating in a Toyota 4×4, well stocked with pringles, sun screen, rancid boots and single-use water bottles. We’ve been looking at 2 silver mining projects between the Chilean towns of Taltal in the south, and Iquique in the north. The projects are roughly 400km apart as a hugely overworked crow flies, with nothing but desert and dust between them.
With a couple of hundred years of silver mining history to dissect and some fun geology thrown in, it’s been one of the more interesting road trips I’ve been on. The Chileans have been wonderful hosts and tour guides; friendly and polite, and immensely patient as I bludgeoned them into a state of baffled incomprehension with my dreadful Spanish.
Is It Temblor or Tremor? I’m Never Sure.
Mother Earth even threw in a 5.2 magnitude earthquake for good measure when I was tucked up in bed on the 15th floor of a hotel in Iquique. The building wobbled a bit too much for my liking, but despite some mild anguish and the inevitable “big one” thoughts, I was still able to spot the different arrival times and characteristics of the P and S waves. I know…nerdy, right?
With the first thump (P wave), I thought was someone was trying to open the balcony door from the outside. A few seconds later the building was sashaying happily from side to side in time to the S wave beat. It was a pip squeak of a temblor by Ring of Fire standards, but definitely the heftiest quake I’ve felt since my South African mining days; enough to focus the mind on looking for possible escape routes that didn’t involve jumping 15 stories into the hotel pool.
How Sweet It Is
Last Tuesday we visited a small gold processing plant close to one of our projects. The visit was part courtesy call to our neighbours, and part professional to see how they process the epithermal gold-silver ore.
We drove up to the security office where we were asked to sign in and complete the inevitable Covid questionnaire. I climbed out of the truck and strolled purposefully into the security office, every inch the rugged mining man. After autographing the logbook, I grabbed a cup of water from the cooler and then picked up the nearby plastic bottle of hand sanitizer and did the necessary.
The gel failed to produce the familiar chill on my skin, prompting me to take a second look at the bottle to see what was actually in it. The mine employees were looking at me with bemusement. Then with a quiet cough, and a slightly embarrassed look, the security guard asked for his coffee sweetener back.
Normal service will be resumed once I’ve scrubbed the sticky mess off my hands.
Don’t Forget
Two weeks of self isolation in the basement or perhaps in the ramshackle shed at the bottom of the garden is the perfect time to sign up for my blog. What else is there to do? Once you’ve admired your secret stash of toilet paper, you can subscribe to urbancrows.com by entering your email address in the freshly disinfected subscription box that I placed temptingly at the top of the page. I’ll be sure to email you more artless earth science-related nonsense in the future.