talking about big rocks

my education
so it´s been a remarkably busy year gone
I have learnt a lot about more this year about metalworking, gemology and lapidary, not to mention a better understanding of some of the finer details of the typical adventures of Captain Hook and the free markets.
Here I share with you one of our "school trips", when we went to the source.
 Cristalinas, Goias, is a famous region in Brazil for it´s many alluvial, open and shaft mines; still bringing forth some great quartz varieties.
 There we met up with Charles and his father Mr. Souto, expert precious stone selectors, lapidarists and jewellers.

 here is Abraham, Charles and myself out the back of the Souto workshops. Charles took us through the whole process step by step, from extraction of the stones, onto cutting, faceting, polishing and finally setting of the stones in pieces of fine jewellery.

 Charles was able to share with us many varieties of quartz/feldspar from the area; including amethyst, prasiolite, lodite, labradite, rose quartz aswell as amazing examples of rutiles and crystal clear quartz with and without inclusions.

 From there we left the town of Cristalinas and headed on our way to the mines. We made an obligatory stop to see and climb all over the "Chapeu do Sol", the big sun hat. This region is all about the earth´s crust and it is quieting to see what nature and some wind erosion can do compared to man´s best back breaking efforts.

 O Chapeu do Sol

And on we go following the alluvial rivers...