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Bou Azer

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Next morning, on we went to Bou Azer with visions of great mineral specimens dancing in our heads. There are and have been many mines in the Bou Azer District and we had the opportunity to visit a couple of them. Our bus drew the short straw and made our way about as far as you can go in the Bou Azer District to Ait Ahmane, the famous skutterudite locality. The road to Ait Ahmane was very rough and it was a bone jarring drive. About two thirds of the way there, out bus drivers all went on strike. When we finally arrived at Ait Ahmane, the drivers refused to drive the last few km on the little road to the mine. So we hiked in to the mine and were able to find some massive skutterudite, small, well-formed skutterudite crystals, safflorite crystals as well as what has turned out to be cobaltoan austinite in preliminary analyses. It was a short visit but I was glad to see the place and collect.

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After Ait Ahmane we dropped by Agoudal Quarry. There is an underground mine there and a small open cut with dumps that we were allowed to collect in and on. This is the locality that produces nice cobaltoan calcite, sphaerocobaltite and erythrite. A number of people found nice specimens and I was please to come away with a small cavity with bright red, sharp, sphaerocobaltite crystals lining it.

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Our travels next took us to Meteorite. It is a small place out in the desert and the hotel could not hold all of the trip participants. We were greeted by another Moroccan folk music band! The hotel set up sort of facsimile Berber tents and beds that were really quite comfortable and Ray and I were happy to sleep in one of those. It had been a long day of collecting and travelling so after supper, most of us just went to bed!