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[Jordi Fabre]

Str4hler (Frank) recently organized a mineralogical trip to Spain, and he announced it in the Spanish Forum, looking for some infos/meetings.
He met different friend during his trip, he collected and he also enjoyed the Spanish food. He published his adventures on the Spanish Forum and he asked to me to translate it here, so that's I will do. Thanks Frank for a so interesting column.

So..... let's start ;-)

I drove from Maastricht, via France, into Spain towards Barcelona, and left Spain again via Bilbao to come home about 3 weeks later...
I planned to stay longer, but I was asked to drive home because I was needed there... But nevertheless I managed to burn ca.1.100 euro of diesel...

My plan was to first: visit some wellknown localities (I love type-localities), then to travel a week around La Union with 2 friends, and last to travel to some localities in Portugal. But as usual, a plan is not the same as reality...

When I entered Spain I drove as fast I could to Lloret de Mar :-) Of course not to lay on the beach in the sun, but to go to Massabe to work and sweat in the sun. Some time ago David gave me a route with map to find the Massabe quarry, and that route was perfect. So I parked my car there, walked up the quarry hill, looked into the quarry and saw someone with a shiny bald head walking through the quarry. No hat, just a shiny head :-) I thought: "no, this cannot be true... this is Pepe!". So I shouted: "Pepe?!", and he responded: "Si? Franca"? Si ! hahaha, that was a big coincidence, because I planned to telephone Pepe that evening to meet him. So, we met earlier and had a nice talk and walked through the quarry. My spanish is not very good, but with hands and feet we managed to usually understand eachother. Only the word "brother" took a long time for me to understand ;-) But later, at Pepe's house, we opened two windows on his computer with Google Translate, and then Pepe typed, and I understood, then I typed, and he understood hahaha. Modern technique for communication... Now all we need are starwars translation buttons on our chest. Hit it, talk, and it's automatically translated in voice :-)
Then Pepe showed his beautiful finds of large Amethyst scepters from Massabe... Beautiful Orthoclase-karlsbad-twins, large (!) smoky quarzes etc etc
Incredible... I was standing there with my mouth open. Wow. These pieces are of museum-quality! A small, 5 cm double ended amethyst scepter on a smoky quarz crystal was my favourite... Pepe gave me too much... I now have some nice samples of amethyst, karlsbad-twins-orthoclas etc at home. Nice memories and nice souvenirs!
By the way: we did not find anything at Massabe, but that was not a problem because I met a new friend there... Actually 2: Pepe AND his brother !
Pepe, we will meet again !

Part 2 will follow...

[Jordi Fabre]

Then I drove further south because I had to meet my friends there in a few days. So I drove to Molina de Aragon...
When you think about type-localities, you usually first think of "lengenbachite from Lengenbach" etc.
Because: usually 'common minerals' do not have a type-locality. Example: the TL of quarz, or the TL of galenite,
but: aragonite has a TL, although it's a relatively common mineral. And I wanted to visit that locality for years now already.
So, with the Bocamina about aragonite in my car, I drove there, and tried to find some spots around the town. First I drove to Cerro Pelado/Valsalobre, then to Rio Gallo and last to Morro Gorrino, where I parked my car and slept with a beautiful view on the castle and the village.
I found some interesting aragonites on all three localities, and some nice pieces of gypsum. Just look for deep red earth and then for aragonites in them.
The aragonites I found here seem to be smaller in general to those of Minglanilla, but around Molina de Aragon richer in habitus. Little "footballs" of aragonite, nice intergrown aragonites etc. The xls near Morro Gorrino seem to be the largest, but I like the small "footballs" from the Rio Gallo the most.

The region here is beautiful. Nice views from the hills on the castle and town, herds of sheeps walking the hills, large groups of birds in the air, flowers, lots to see here.
Later the second day I walked the town and then drove to Minglanilla...

p.s.: near Cerro Pelado I almost stepped on a large black snake. So, watch out there...

[Jordi Fabre]

I like to wake up early, see the sun rise, and then drive as fast as I can to the nearest cafe for 2 cups of warm cafe-con-leche, galao or nice strong bica :-)
Then eat 2 pain au chocolat and I can live on that energy for 1 day. So, that's what I did first. Always start a new day good. You only have one life...

So, I then drove to Minglanilla. The drive from here to Minglanilla is beautiful... Wonderful green valley's, steep gorges, fields of olive trees on red earth. Etc. So I stopped a lot to enjoy the landscape and take photographs.

Arriving in Minglanilla, I drove to "La Pesquera" next to the old salt-mine, with a map of a dutch friend of mine. It's a nice drive down into the valley. I advice only to drive down there with a good 4x4 ;-) And when it rains, don't go down. The mud sticks to your wheels and will not let go until you arrive home :-)

There are a lot of localities around Minglanilla to search for aragonite, but first I wanted to see this one. There must have been hundreds of collectors here already, but still, higher up the hill on the left side, I managed to find nice aragonite. The thicker crystals can be found relatively easy. The more transparent xls are less easy to find, but I'm happy with what I found. For me it is more important to travel and visit localities (to have seen it and been there) than to find "the best and most beautiful" specimens. The experience of finding something gives me the most satisfaction. Having a lot of minerals at home does not interest me at all... On one spot though, I dug into the mountain, and found dozens of more transparent aragonite xls to ca.7cm long and 1 cm thick. The colour of the aragonite varies from white to brown with green and purple zones in them. Usually on mineral fairs, dealers offer only loose crystals of aragonite, so I was also happy to take some specimens with the aragonite-xls still grown on matrix... I was really very happy, and felt sorry to be there alone, so I could not share the fun with other friends...
Now, at home, I started unpacking the aragonites, but I have some troubles to clean them.

After two days in this region, I again had to drive on, and went more south to the region around Agramon.

[Jordi Fabre]

But before driving to Agramon, I first drove to Cuenca. It's a beautiful town, and of course I wanted to see the "hanging buildings" etc. But most of my time in Cuenca I just sat on the main square drinking a beer or 2, eating delicious tapas, and watching people walking by :-) I am a very lazy guy who likes good food, good portwine, good l'eau de vie and just sit and do nothing :-)
Mmmmmmmm Jamon Serrano, Queso Manchego, patatas bravas, and... mmmmmmmmmmmmm boquerones !
Cuenca is a beautiful and colourful town which I will for sure return to with my Veronique later.

I drove away to Agramon early in the morning, and was greeted by a beautiful sun...

Around Agramon it is possible to find "menilite-opal". I visited two localities around Agramon and was lucky to find nice specimens.
People who want more information can email me. I like to call these specimens "barbapappa's" ;-)

[Jordi Fabre]

The day after, I already had to drive to Alicante to pick up two friends at the airport...
But on the way I shortly visited two localities around Orxeta/Finestrat for red quarz and gypsum roses, but did not find much interesting material...

If someone here is willing to trade some nice red quarzes with me, please email me ;-)

More later, now breakfast in town in Maastricht with coffee!

Cheers!

[Jordi Fabre]

The first day around La Union we visited some easy to reach localities like the Precaucion, Haiti/Esperanza and Brunita.
In the Precaucion we focussed on the more rare manganese minerals instead of just taking hemimorphite.
Analyses will have to tell what we found: chalcophanite, hydrohetaerolite, manganite, pyrolusite etc?
I like the hemimorphites from there very much, but 10 pieces with hemimorphite at home is enough...

We looked on the dumps of the Haiti/Esperanza, and went underground there in a some mines. One was very very deep. We must go back there to check out more of the mine.
On the dumps Mn-minerals were relatively easy to be found in small but nice xx. But I have to unpack those to see what we found, and perhaps make analyses. Just optically it's very difficult/impossible to what Mn-mineral is what...

In the Brunita we found again some small scepter-quarz xls with siderite, pyrite etc, but less than last times. My friends were happy with what they found. I gave all my findings to them, so all were happy. When someone has a small piece with a nice small ludlamite/vivianite from the Brunita at home for me, I would be grateful. Because in all my visits I never found one of those.

And in the evening we of course had dinner with tapas in Bar Minero in La Union with some cerveza's... ;-)

[Jordi Fabre]

The other days around La Union we visited the Balsa Depositaria, Teresita, Julio Cesar and Secretaria.
For more information about those tours, friends can email me personally ;-)
(the mines in La Union are deep.....)
But... For me it is very interesting to see old mining buildings, shafts, machines etc. I like to walk there, close my eyes, and then visualize when the mines were still active. Machines making noice, miners walking around, wagons with ore coming to the surface, people shouting and laughing.... But now, nature is winning back the old buildings, shafts and adits are collapsing.
Nature winning back ground makes beautiful photographs...

Old mines are so beautiful !
So, please, please, please, only leave footprints in/near old mines. Never leave rubbish.... (more about that later)

Here a link to some old mines under my house: enjoy!
https://www.strahlen.org/vp/nl/pietersbergtour/
(link normalized by Jordi)

Cheers!

[Jordi Fabre]

Later we visited the region around Mazarron at the Dolores and Ramonete. It is so easy these days to communicate... We exchanged meeting points by mobile phone and GPS, and Felipe, Jos and his wife Maria and son arrived at the Ramonete-prospect!
We had nice conversations (lucky that Felipe speaks perfect french and translated between Jos and me!), we exchanged information (and exchanged chocolate for minerals :-), looked for minerals, and then drove to the Dolores-prospect.
There we had a good lunch and exchanged food and some alcohol :-) Then again we looked for minerals (and found interesting material). It was very nice also to meet Jos. He brought a lot of minerals for us to take... For which we are of course very grateful... And, it is nice to know the man behind those beautiful mineral-photographs here in the forum!

When the clock turned to 17:00 we drove to Felipe's house (via the Mina Sta Rosa and a nice unpaved road :-) and watched his incredible regional collection. He has a museum-quality collection of local minerals. Stunning! Really something to be proud of... As Felipe is a baker, he gave us fresh bread for the next breakfast (mmmm), and then we went on to our next sleeping place in Vera.
All in all a perfect day. Good weather, sun, friends, a good lunch, minerals,

There, in Vera, the best thing you can do is to go to the Restaurante Asador Cortijo Albari... My friend Stefan (the "boss" of mineralienatlas.de) has been eating there before, and the last year he has been dreaming of returning there to eat that juicy red steak again. And... I must say it was soooo good, that we had dinner there 2 evenings, and every evening we ate the same :-)
After dinner they serve delicious Panizo Licor de Orujo de Hierbas, Orujo de Café, Aguardiente de Orujo and Orujo con Miel... I was very lucky that I did not have to drive. You have to drink each

flavour 3 times of course...

Cheers! hic!

[Jordi Fabre]

The days after we visited the Cerro Minado/Huercal Overa, Herrerias and El Arteal.

In the Cerro Minado we met some of the park rangers and fire brigade. We exchanged information and email addresses. They did not know that this region was so interesting for minerals! So last week I have sent them information on the mines&minerals in the region. For them it was no problem to look for minerals there, just don't make fire....

For minerals I like the Cerro Minado very much. Small minerals, but always delivering a nice surprise. This year the surprise was that we almost did not find any erythrin/annabergite hahaha. But... we found shiny and very nice brown aggregates of "cobalt-olivenite" (with smolianinovite?). Enough material to make some good analyses... I will send some material to friends to make good photographs.
The best specimens were found near to 2-4mm wide veins of massive oxidized tennantite-tetraedrite.
We also found other 'normal' minerals from here like conichalcite, azurite, asbolan etc. And nice pseudomorphs from malachite to cuprite... I'm still in doubt about many finds... There's a lot of white and green crystals that need analyses I think... It's very easy to say "we found pharmacolite", but that group of white minerals is large&complex, so it's better to safely say it might be just calcite(-Co)/aragonite...

When we arrived at Herrerias, we got another surprise... The deep quarry is almost completely filled up now! In about 1 year the quarry was again almost recultivated. But, we still found some nice baryt-xls left from the road in the quarry. There also the workers allowed us to look for minerals. We asked a person in a big jeep, and it was ok.

El Arteal was very interesting. A recent conversation on the gr_mulhacen emailinglist gave the truth though. There are more minerals to be found upperground in the Barranco, and underground not very much different minerals. But.... I like those shiny jarosites so much ;-) We also found some other nice specimens underground, but I have to look at them more careful before I can say what it is. But there are also nice siderite, galena, hematite, Fe/Mn-minerals etc.
And we found trash... much trash... See https://www.foro-minerales.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1325

[Jordi Fabre]

Today we had breakfast with coffee, bread, cheese and boquerones :-) mmmmm boquerones are good on every moment of the day...
(the breakfast was also served by a topless man... but that's another story that I love to tell you when we meet again in Spain :-)
(and... to pay for our "hotel in Vera" we had to buy a 5-meter high palm-tree... Also a story to tell with a bear on the table)

Then we made a short visit to the "Rambla de las Granatillas"/Nijar. Not only to pick up some almandine-garnets, but also to look for more rare xenolites there with sillimanite, cristobalite and cordierite. We were lucky to find a few of those, rather large... A 3 cm sillimanite?
And of course lots of nice garnets. Some really clear, and so to 6-8mm.
You should know that I will get married next september 4/2009. And when Veronique saw the nicest cherryred/pink garnets from Nijar, she picked out the best one and said: "I want that one in my wedding ring"!
Heej, isn't that cool? So next week we have an appointment with a jeweler to ask if that's possible. If so, Nijar will have a special place in our hearts forever ;-)

Then we drove to Rodalquilar for some tours there. Friends can email me for details... ;-)

After the tours underground we were very very dirty, took a long shower, and then went into town for a few liters of sangria and a table full of seafood paella!
Then I left my two friends, and drove on to Granada to visit the Alhambra.

Spain has so many beautiful things to offer to us... Beautiful people, nature, food, weather, culture, architecture, friends and... minerals !

Cheers!

p.s.: I made 1510 pictures. I would love to upload 20 pictures here of the Alhambra, where the light is soooo beautiful !

[Jordi Fabre]

Then the warfront at home needed me to come back, so after Granada I was driving home again, when... just above Madrid, at about 13:00, my phone rang...
ring, ring, ring, si? Hello, this is George! I think: "George"? Who the f#ck is George? Ahaaaa!!! Jorge ! Jorge from Portugal. Si !!
Jorge, how are you? Good, good, but you have to come to Silvares now! You have to be in Silvares at 20:00 today !
So, while driving, I programmed 'Silvares' in my car-computer, and the computer said "turn left please, and drive 550 kilometer..."
Damn! 550 kilometer before 20:00... In my car (she drives 100 km/hour) that meant I had to turn left immediately and put the gas on...
So I said, OK Jorge, no problem, I see you tonight :-)

That's how nice life can be... One moment you're driving home, the other moment a friend arranged a tour underground in Panasqueira and you're driving to Portugal !
At about 19:00 I slowly pulled my car into the parking in front of "O Gasometro" in Aldeia de San Francisco de Assis... I stepped out of the car, inhaled the cold, fresh air here, and looked towards the houses on the "Barroca Grande". What a view..... I was here also in 2004, nothing seems to have changed. Perhaps the immense dump had grown a little larger, but it is an awsome view to the mine, the mining buildings and the dump. The sun was just going down, so I walked into the restaurant where I was the only guest to eat that evening, just someone else drinking a beer there. And they served me a great 'sopa do dia' and 'bife a gasometro' with a nice cool cerveza. And that for 10,50 euro... And it was delicious!
The restaurant is filled with mining pictures, mining lamp and old mining tools, and the heater is a 2m. high carbide-lamp (which is called 'gasometro' in portugese). After dinner they kept serving me coffee until they closed...
Believe me, then you know that life can be good :-)

Jorge was sleeping in Silvares, and I planned to sleep near the mine itself, so we planned to meet eachother the next morning 07:30 in front of the 'Gasometro'. So at 07:15 I made coffee, and I waited for Jorge to arrive. I hate to be late... 07:30, no Jorge, 07:45, no Jorge, cold coffee... So I SMSsed him, asking: "Hi Jorge, are you going to be here on time?". And he responded: "yes, no problem". 08:00 no Jorge. Now I was nervous, because we had to be in the mining-office to go underground at 07:45-08:00.... 08:15, there was Jorge! I gave him his new hot coffee, and we started talking. It was a cold morning! So we were talking with semi-frozen lips. Then I said to Jorge "Heej, shouldn't we be going now?". And he answered: "why?". Well... because we're late? Then he looked at his watch and said "it's 07:15, we have time"...

Aaaagggghhhh, of course! Portugese time.... Aaahhhh, me so stupid!!! I forgot that Portugal lives in a different time-zone hahahaha.
So we stepped into his car (with heating in the car, mmmm), we talked some more, and then slowly drove to the Rebordóes mine :-)

There we talked with our guides and the Management about what we wanted to do/see/photograph, we got our gear, and we walked underground to level 1, and then to level 2 and 3...

And now I have to say.... more will follow...
because Jorge and I promised the Beralt Management to write an article about our tour, and they have to approve all texts and pictures first before I can use them.
so...more later :-)

I want to thank everyone here who helped me in planning this tour,
thankful to make new friends in Spain and Portugal, and hope to see you soon again!

Please bear with me... Here in Maastricht now it is sooooo cold! I have the heater on... I want to drive back to warm and friendly Spain&Portugal tomorrow...

Cheers!

p.s.: Something I would like to mention here also, is that I did not drive home with 300 kilo of minerals in my car...
(I know that some think of us tourists as people who come to 'steal' hundreds of kilo's of spanish minerals...)
I just put everything on the scale, and it weights 46 kilo. Those nice Herrerias baryte seems heavier than normal baryte ;-)
But still... 46 kilo is too much, so anyone who wants something can email me.
sorry to make the peninsula of Spain&Portugal a little lighter... ;-)

[str4hler]

The Beralt mining company gave 'green light' for publishing the text and pictures of the visit underground.
See: https://www.mineraltravel.com/inspired/btwp01.html
(link normalized by Jordi)

Enjoy!
Cheers, Frank

[Tony L. Potucek]

An excellent report, Frank! I really enjoyed your descriptions and your underground trip photographs. As you know, taking pictures underground in large galleries is very difficult due to a lack of an extraneous light. The shots of the vein were really good, although I was hoping for shots of an unexpected pocket filled with tungsten minerals and quartz. Not that you didn't try, eh?

I really miss my days working underground in the mines and I am thankful that you took the time to prepare this piece on a very famous mineral producer that I always wanted to know more about. Ausgezeichnet, mein Herr! Danke schon!

Sincerely,

[str4hler]

hahaha, thanks Tony,
just for the record, I have many German friends, and I live 20 minutes from the German border, but I'm Dutch and live in Maastricht :-)
Your German is fine by the way, no spelling errors!
And.... I will be in Az soon. You will be in Tucson right?
Cheers! Frank

[Montanpark]

Hoi Frank,
mooie trip :-) ... seems to have been just a great tour .. would like to do kind like this again as i was last time collecting in germany in 2007 for a few days on old sites which i had seen already dozens of times earlier. To be in the field is still the best,

hope so see you soon,
(and yes, the Omaue trip 2005 was really nice)

Best wishes,
zalig kerstfeest en to ziens! ;-)

Cheers
Roger