Day 9: Fogo de Chao, flights back to the US

(Saturday, May 5 2007) After flying into Sao Paulo, we all congregated at Jim & Beatriz's house (Beatriz is originally from Sao Paulo). For lunch, we decided to go to Fogo de Chao, a famous Brazilian charasquiria. A charasquiria is a type of barbeque, but a highly advanced version of one. To refer to a charasquiria as a barbeque would be like referring to a 100-foot yacht as a dingy.

Fogo de Chao is a place that would make a vegetarian run screaming. Each guest has a small paper disk next to their place setting that is colored green on one side and red on the reverse. Green means you're ready for more food; red means you need a breather. If your disk is green-side up, gentlemen dressed in tradational Brazilian cowboy gear approach your table in a non-stop stream brandishing various cuts of beef on huge swords. They use a second knife to slice off portions of your choosing which you snag with little tongs. In addition to beef, they also serve lamb, pork, hens, and sausages. It was a culinary experience the likes of which I have never experienced. I think I could have spent all day there, and had we not flights to catch, we very well might have. After the feast, I didn't feel the need to eat again for something like 16 hours.

Everyone made it to the airport without further incident, and US customs did not seem overly concerned with the small yet heavy cache of iron-rich rocks tucked into my suitcase.

Day 8: Political unrest and the struggle to leave Carajas

(Friday, 4 May 2007) Friday morning we rose early to pack up and ready ourselves for the drive back to Maraba. But as I frequently found to be the case in Brazil, even the most solid-seeming plans tend to shift and flow like water. Here, our plans were disrupted when we discovered that the main road between Carajas and Maraba was blocked by members of the group "Sem Terra" or MST, a group of squatters / rouge political organization. Sem Terra means "without land." On the way into the region, we had passed by their makeshift camp that was chiefly marked by the smell of burning plastic. Now, on the return trip, a crude roadblock had been erected at their camp that blocked all traffic in both directions. We didn't get close enough to see if the protesters were armed, but even if they weren't, running their blockade was out of the question.

After some discussion, we attempted to locate an alternative, more circuitous route, but that too was reported to be blocked by protestors. So our only recourse was to turn around and try to fly out of the small airstrip at Carajas. Fortunately for us, the CVRD mining geologist Giloberto arranged for some of the secretarial staff at the mine HQ to assist us in making last-minute plane reservations. We secured passage on a small, propeller-driven plane and eventually departed without incident after a several hour wait at the airport. We flew directly to Brazilia, but arrived far too late to catch any connecting flights to Sao Paulo. We stayed overnight at a local hotel and flew out the next morning. Since most of our group were using US government travel, our relief at evading the blockade was mixed with some trepidation at the thought of trying to justify the unplanned expenses on our travel reports back in the US.

Picture of "Sem Terra" protesters from May 2005. Photo from BBC article by Sue Branford

Day 7: Carajas zoo + media presentation

Page from "Veja" magazine - blurb on our trip is to the left of Al Gore's picture.

(Thursday, 3 May 2007) Spent part of the morning walking through the Carajas zoo. Given the proximity of the raw jungle to our hotel (here's the view out the back), I was glad to see the menagerie of local fauna in a controlled setting (rather than slithering under my door, for example). Most of the species we saw originated from the immediate area, including numerous monkeys, a puma, and many kinds of very large snakes.

In the afternoon, Simon, Carlos, and Nathan presented an overview of the analog project and HiRISE results to some of the mine personnel at the conference room in the village. We presented the CVRD staff with a wall-sized poster of a HiRISE image as a thank you for all of their help.

I also need to recognize the hard work of the PR personnel from the mine. Apparently, the PR staff sent out a quick press release to the local and national media. As a result of their quick action, I had a very queer experience on the flight back home. When I first boarded the plane, I had a brief conversation with the gentleman sitting next to me. He told me he was a pharmaceutical representative on his way to a conference, and I explained to him how I'm a geologist working for NASA on a project at Carajas. Many hours later, he was reading "Veja," a weekly news magazine in Portuguese that the Brazilian equivalent of Time or Newsweek. Suddenly he exclaimed, "Hey, you are in magazine!" Low and behold, there was a short paragraph that described the collaborative project between NASA and CVRD. The gentleman was kind enough to tear out that page of his magazine and give it to me - here's a scan image of that page. Our paragraph is just to the left of the picture of Al Gore. I must admit, I was a little shocked at how quickly this made it into the Brazilian media. It was a pretty surreal experience to find yourself in the magazine of the person seated next to you on a plane.

Day 6: Core shed

(Wednesday, 2 May 2007) All of the drill cores collected by CVRD are archived in several massive warehouses at the mine. As I mentioned at the end of Day 4, extensive coring operations were underway at a new plateau. To us geologists, this was like being given the keys to a candy shop. This place reminded me of the end of the movie "Raiders of the Lost Ark," where a lone technician is wheeling the boxed up Ark of the Covenant down row upon endless row of crates. Here in the core shed were hundreds of meters of core laid out for us to examine - a goldmine, er ironmine of information. I spent a good hunk of the morning poring over the cores looking for impact spherules, but sadly did not locate any.

Of particular interest to our team were the many sequences of jaspilite, which had been in short supply in the field. CVRD generously allowed us to take samples from the cores, so we identified several samples for the rock saw technicians to cut in half. In the afternoon, Simon Hook and myself worked with the rock saw technicians to try and reduce our sample set to a reasonable weight. The main problem with BIF samples is that they are freaking HEAVY. We tried very hard to be selective in our sampling and avoid the temptation of carting away everything we could carry. At the end of the day, we had a fully representative set of the various rock types exposed throughout the mining complex.

View inside the Core "Shed"

Scene from end of the movie "Raiders of the Lost Ark"

Dr. Nathan Bridges taking picture of core

Day 5: The hunt for jaspilite

(Tuesday, 1 May 2007) Today, plan was to try and sample a jaspilite pod from the huge N4E mine we saw yesterday from the overlook point. One of the reason that Carajas is especially notably amongst the world BIFs (banded iron formations) is that it is among the least metamorphosed or altered. There are large BIFs in the Great Lakes regions of the US, for example, but over time heat and pressure have cooked these rocks and destroyed much of their original minerals and fabrics. Here at Carajas, the BIF comes in three flavors: jaspilite, soft hematite, and hard hematite. Jaspilite is the least altered of the three types and contains alternating layers of often blood-red silica (chert) and iron (hematite). In soft and hard hematite, later alteration has replaced much of the silica bands with iron. This is great from a mining/economic standpoint since it means more overall iron, but less than great from a geologist's perspective since it means that understanding the original rock is that much more difficult.

Example of soft layered hematite in N4W mine from yesterday.

During his PhD research, Joel had studied and mapped a large lens or pod of jaspilite. Unfortunately for us, it is in an area of active mining in N4E. Due to safety concerns, only one of the two cars will visit the site and try and to take samples. I stayed behind with the other group to explore the ledge we were on. After a brief interval, the first car returned from their sojourn deeper within the mine. Although they located the jaspilite area, much of it had been mined out. Mining briefly halted while they grabbed some remaining jaspilite samples, but they were not that impressive. This failed attempt illustrates one of the great frustrations of doing geology in an active mine. Although the exposure and access to material is unparalleled, given the pace of mining, the lifetime of interesting exposures is not long.

Next, we stopped an overview point near 5NE mine. Since this locality is not being actively mined, we should have an easier time studying the exposures and obtaining samples. We first stopped near the top of the mine to sample relatively fresh mafic material. The BIF here is roughly 200 m thick, and is bounded on the top and bottom by volcanics that have mostly been altered. Since one of the overall goals of this program is to gather ground truth data for satellite and airborne remote sensing spectral instruments, it is important for us to widely sample the exposed rock types in order to make sense of what we see in the satellite images.

At the bottom of N5E, we were able to sample so-called "hard hematite." In this material, all of the silica layers have been replaced with iron, and additional iron has filled all of the pore spaces in the rock. It is amazing heavy stuff, and yet still retains some trace of it's original layering.