At the Marte porphyry gold pit in the Maricunga Belt of Chile, as part of the Maricunga Field Workshop.

  On the previous evening, on return to Copiapo from La Coipa, the group had been given a detailed presentation by Enrique Viteri, an expert consulting geologist who had been involved in the discovery of a number of the Maricunga Belt gold deposits.   This covered the geology, mineralisation and discovery of those deposits.   The charter bus had departed Copiapo at 6:00 am next morning to drive back up into the ranges to the east towards the Marte deposit, accompanied by Enrique which explained the geology as we went with stops to examine key units/lithologies.   On arrival at the Marte Mine, that was on care and maintenance, the group was escorted on a traverse of the key faces of the pit to study the geology mineralisation and alteration, before inspecting drill core.   Following lunch in the early to mid afternoon, they returned to Copiapo airport to take a late afternoon commercial airline flight north to Antofagasta.

Photographs by Mike Porter