Back in Copiapo, things were fairly busy on the work front for a couple of days. My boss from the US was visiting in order to sign the JV deal with Mariana that would make my presence here "official" (for lack of a better description). There was also a mine visit to a large (and fairly famous) deposit just south of town called Candelaria, followed by project reviews of recent works and mapping out what the plan is for the next month or three.
The visit to Candelaria was extraordinary. The initial briefing and geological discussions were held in the geo's office, which is the largest and most spacious office for geo's that I've ever seen, by a considerable margin. It is definitely how it should be. The for the mine tour.
Imagine a VERY large mine, a couple of hundred metres below the original surface, tucked into a valley between some reasonable size hills (not huge, not small). Now imagine the mine and maybe 50m above it being filled with fog, leaving clear visibility of maybe 100m (at most). Now imagine that fog is dust. Hmmm. I have no photo's of the Candelaria mine because from the lookout, you can't see the floor of the pit, let alone the other side. You can hear a whole heap of machinery working amongst the dust below, but can't see it until it is quite close. Just amazing, and illustrates the differences that exist around the world in terms of standards. There's no way that it would be allowed to operate in Australia, but we're not in "Perth" anymore, are we Toto?
After that, we headed to the core yard, which was another fascinating experience. The core storage area was a bit different - fancy trying to recover some core for re-logging amongst that lot! Because they do a lot of core drilling, I was interested in seeing the core cutting facility. My eyes nearly popped when I saw it. Despite still using "brickies" type saws, the building was sound-proofed, dust/water extractors above the saws, the operators were in full aprons, dust masks, safety glasses, safety shields, gloves and so on. Very impressive, and even more impressive, when I asked to take a photo, he refused to have a photo taken without ALL of the gear being worn. Really good attitude and showed that there are plenty of things we can still learn back in Oz.
Regards
A
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