After leaving the village of Mahaiza, we drove the rough roads to the Tsaramanga mine. This and most mines in Madagascar are not underground. They are just areas carved within the rock faces. The miners just chisel at the rock and follow seams until they play out.
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| As we walk down to the mine, Doug helps Mitchell along. |
After the arduous drive, we walked down to the open pit mine area. There were piles of beautiful rose quartz in areas all around the pit. We were told that most of the material was sold to China. We didn't really buy any as rose quartz is very common in the US.
The following photos show the mine, local miners home and their storage building.
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| Doug helps Mitchell over to the mine's high wall as Giorgio walks down. The high wall here is about a 100' drop. |
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| Here is a cart for carrying the quartz to this storage building. |
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| Inside the storage building there are piles of nice rose quartz |
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| Here is a nice panorama of the mine. They were pumping the water out to get to a new seam |
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| One of the hard working miners |
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| Here is the miners home. His family works the farm terraces while he works the mine. |
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| ...and of course his dingo dog |
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| Giorgio and Doug making their way back to the storage building. |
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| Doug at the miners home |
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| Can you imagine carrying this load up out of the mine? |
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| The rose quartz seam. They just mine this area deeper and deeper until it plays out. |
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A nice pile of quartz. You can see the mine in the background.
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| Giorgio, Mitchell, Doug and the mine's owners Son making their way back to the van. |
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