New car arrived at 7 o’clock this morning with two drivers and a mechanic. They tow our vehicle to a garage, to change the gear box with the one they brought with them, and then leave me the new vehicle a Ford Ranger. They’ve have left for Tana when we arrive back that afternoon.
Finally out to the dematoid mines. The 40kms to the closest village is fine but the last 10km to the mine is 4x4 or feet only. The mines are located in an inlet that used to be a mangrove, plus they are starting to creep up the higher ground. As you can see in the photo’s they fill with water being below sea level.
There are two levels of dematoid in seams. One is at approximately 1.5m and the miners sit in the water and just dig out everything and wash it there. The other is at about 18m and requires a group to have a generator for lights and to keep a pump going. They also have to pump it out each morning. The miners have built a levy across the inlet to keep all but the highest tides out so they can work all day. As you can imagine with water constantly seeping in through the walls it’s anything but safe in the deeper mines, but that is where the best material comes from.
I have bought some nice specimens with the stones still on matrix and about 35 grams of facet material 4cts and up, in about 3 hours of looking at stone. Rufin comes here for 1 month at a time and is happy if he gets 200 grams of facet material (2cts and up), so it’s obvious that for me to get 35 grams, of my sizes, in a day that there hasn’t been a buyer here for about a week. Note bring a hat, as there is no shade and it was in the high 20’s here today.
Back at the hotel a few people show up with specimens. Point to note here is to smell the specimens as some are enhanced with extra stones attached with super glue. I buy a couple of spectacular pieces one with 4 crystals all about 12-15mm in amongst some white druzy quartz crystals.
I’ve reached my limit on specimens as I have to carry everything through customs and so I’m limited to what will fit in a bag. Then one person unwraps the best specimen I’ve seen. About a 30cm square matrix with 47 crystals over a cm in size, scatterings of smaller crystals in groups and one crystal over 20mm that must have been over 15 grams. All crystals are terminated and showing all the colours of dematoid on the one specimen. He has had this specimen for 18 months and has a $5,000 price tag on it. No I didn’t buy it, but I will ask Bill from BK Minerals if it’s a good buy and maybe do a bit of bargaining next time.
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