Adiós Etili

It has been a while since my last post but I have been at work for the past month, so nothing too exciting. For those of you have worked for a month straight or longer know how I am feeling right now especially when it’s the home stretch before travelling. My time in Turkey has gone by so quickly but the experiences and adventures I have had will forever be part of who I am. It has not yet sunk in that I am across the world fully immersed in a completely different culture, this is partly thanks to our colleagues here who have welcomed us wholeheartedly and made us feel right at home. Without their hospitality and friendship our stay in turkey would not have been as pleasant as it has been. I hope to thank them by showing them the same amount of hospitality and generosity they have shown us when they visit Canada, as our doors are always open to them. I have had numerous friends tell me that the experiences they are having on their travels don’t really sink in until they are back home, who knows maybe I will have the same revelation when I am back home,  but until I get back home I will be continuing my adventure and hoping to experience it to its fullest.

As I previously mentioned we have been planning this trip for the past two months and were definitely looking forward to it, well the day has come where we say goodbye to Etili our home for the past two months. We will be leaving for Jordan tomorrow evening (Aug 1^st)from Istanbul and arriving in Amman the same night. The trip we have planned currently will have us travelling to the south of Jordan to the coastal city of Aqaba stopping at Mt. Nebo, the dead sea, Wadi rum (or Wadi Mujib) Petra then finally Aqaba. We will be flaying back to Istanbul from Amman on Aug 7^th  we will be taking an overnight bus from Istanbul to Cappadocia where we will be spending some time hiking, mountain biking and hot air balloon tour. We will be taking another overnight bus to Trabzon to visit the Sumela monastery.  After Trabzon we will be taking a flight back to Istanbul where we will spend the remaining 2 days before heading back to Canada. My next post will most likely be after getting back to Canada so till then…

Cheers!

Raja Yarra

Ps. sorry if there are any grammatical or spelling mistakes I wrote this while packing and didn’t get a chance to look it over 

Touring the Agean II: Izmir, Ephesus

Izmir

We left for Izmir in the afternoon and got to Izmir fairly early, as we had some time to spare we decided to be frugal and search for the cheapest hotel/hostel/ pansyion. Well we found them; one of them was a “nice little hotel”. I think its motto is ‘no bathroom doors, no problem’ after a couple of goldmines the one which we decided to stay in was a quaint little hotel with some structural integrity problems. The floor taped down to the floor and balcony was quite open with it not having a barrier or anything. It would be an adventure similar to Frodo’s who walked into mordor and flew out; similarly we will walk into the death trap and flying out to stay in another hotel. The building next to the hotel was partially collapsed and did not rise above the second floor. Being geologists and having referred to the earthquake hazard map of turkey, we decided it was best to stay in a hotel that could withstand at least a magnitude 2 earthquake...

After a very sketchy sleep we decided to upgrade from the charming hotel we stayed at our first night. On our second full day in Izmir we checked into the new hotel early in the morning (spent some moolah this time) and started exploring Izmir and its rich history through the roman-byzantine and ottoman times. We visited the clock tower of Izmir, the open-covered bazaar (a really confusing place) and some museums. When visiting bazaars in other countries you better be prepared to shake off shop owners wanting to sell you stuff, we rejected all politely and even talked to some for a period of time. We visited the cultural art museum and the archeology museum and  after gaining some limited knowledge on weapons, roman-byzantine- ottoman culture and some information on camel wrestling we got some lunch and headed to kadifakali, a fort / ruins on top of a hill. Surrounding the ruins were communities of locals with the men likely working in the city and the woman selling rugs/cloths/purses handmade by them (really awesome watching them weaving the rugs right in front of you, picked up some nice souvenirs). We took the bus back down and walked over to the agora (insert history… Wikipedia it).

Izmir Clock Tower 

Agora, still under escavation this historic 

site is home to multiple civilization throughout

the ages.

  
Ephesus

Our second day in Izmir we decided to do a daytrip to Selcuk and visit Ephesus one of the more famous sites in turkey, once part of the ancient Greek world and later a major roman city. The site is famous for its Temple of Artemis; one of the seven wonders of the ancient world as well as the Library of Celsus (picture below) among other amazing buildings. The architecture of the buildings were amazing both Sadeed and I were speechless (doesn’t happen a lot, according to our colleagues). We were awed and humbled by the sheer size of the city once home to 250 000 people during its peak occupancy.

Celsus Library in Ephesus (amazing!)

The smaller of the two ancient theatre in Ephesus  

Heading back to Izmir after a whole day in Selcuk we went to the harbor and had dinner right by the sea side with nothing separating us from falling into the water (really ...no fence/barrier) the jelly fish were swimming, fresh breeze blowing from the sea the only thing that would have made this better was having the dinner with a girl rather than a guy ... (I won’t really say ‘no offence to Sadeed’ as he was probably thinking the same thing).

Back to work

We arrived in Cannakale pretty early in the morning, and waited for our colleagues Sezer and Baris to show up, as they took time off work to act as tour guides for the day. First was a traditional breakfast at an amazing restaurant looking over the Dardanelles strait, afterwards we visited the ruins of Troy and Gallipolis a World War I site. Unfortunatly we had to cut our day short as one of the rigs (drill machine) broke down and Sezer had to head back to camp to take care of it. So off we went to camp for another month of work before our next vacation… Jordan

Touring the Agean (Marmaris and Bodrum)

Hello folks

This is a quick summary of our ten day trip, travelling the west coast of Turkey. I will be breaking up this post into two sections because it is a bit too big to post in one sitting, so here we go!

Marmaris

We are really lucky to have such amazing co-workers, they took us out before taking us to the bus station and helped us board the right bus to Marmaris (I am sure we would have figured it out but I guess they wanted to make sure two nice kids from Canada don’t get lost in the pandemonium of the Turkish bus station). We took the overnight bus to Marmaris and arrived around 10 am. Wanting to stretch our legs after the eight hour bus ride we decided to walk to the hostels, it might have been a good idea if we had some sort of map, but maps are for the cautious and smart so we decided to forego the map and walk towards the harbor where we were sure hostels were bound to be. Somewhat to our surprise(not really) we couldn’t find any hostels so we threw in the white flag and went to an information center to find out where the hostels/pansiyons were. It turns out most of the hostels were closed and we only had apartment hotels and little paysions for us to stay in. Luckily we found a pansyion right in the old city and less than a 5 min walk to the bar street (quite literally a street filled with bars/pubs/clubs on either side).

Marmaris: a few min walk from our hotel

I have got to be honest, at first Marmaris first was a disappointment, It was the mixing pot of the standard package holidayer vacation spot derelict of any traditional sense. Every seaside restaurant catered your everyday English fare ( fish and chips, english breakfast etc etc). If I am being a bit harsh, its only because I expected a lot more. Although I guess I we didn’t stay in Marmaris long enough to fully experience it. It surely has something to offer as thousands of people visit it every year, visiting from all across Europe. Maybe it’s the amazing taglines the restaurant hosts and shop owners use, lines such as “I like food, I love sex” but that didn’t seem to work for us either . The two days we wanted to spend in Marmaris went by pretty fast with one day touring the cities sites, the second spending it on a beach, 30 min boat ride from Marmaris. We wanted to visit all the touristy locations (beaches) but we had very little time and decided to spend our two days in the city and the beaches outside of Marmaris as they got less crowded. The nights got pretty lively in the city with everyone on the beach turning up to party in bar’s street which I mentioned before as being only a few min walk from our pension/hotel.  By the time we left, I understood why Marmaris was such a popular destination; Marmaris is a sunny getaway for the Europeans as the Caribbean is for the North Americans. It has its own niche in the tourism market and if we had expected and known what it was before travelling I believe we would have had enjoyed it much more.

Highlights of Marmaris

- Karlassan: Our hostel/hotel was super cheap and had amazing views!

- Bar scene: If people like to party this is an amazing place to visit.

Kids playing in the streets of the old city 

 Rhodes

Before leaving Marmaris we decided to take a ferry over to the Greek island, Rhodes. About an hour’s ferry ride away from Marmaris, this island was once home to the Colossus of Rhodes one of the 7 ancient wonders of the world. We mainly toured inside the old city and didn’t venture too far from the harbor the one reason being we only had 8 hours on the island the other being the old city and the harbor are pretty big. pictures follow

Highlights of Rhodes

-Old City

-Castle

Bodrum

Getting back from Rhodes I had a bit of trouble with immigration, in my infinite wisdom and packing in the early morning after a night of partying led me to forget my residence permit. I had to buy a visitor’s visa in order to get back into Turkey. Wasted money, learned a lesson and Sadeed will never let me live it down…”remember that one time you forgot your residence permit and couldn’t get back in to turkey..?”. We took a 2 hour bus ride to Bodrum by the time we had got there it was pretty late at night and we were two tired from the partying the night before and walking all day so we took the first opportunity for a hotel/hostel we probably would have gotten a cheaper place if we looked around or even bargained but once again we succumbed to laziness/tiredness.  Personally I was hesitant about Bodrum, fearing we would be experiencing the same sort of atmosphere as in Marmaris with incessant shop keepers pestering every which way we came or some of the other things we didn’t like about Marmaris. After a good night’s sleep in comfortable beds our first day in Bodrum was to tour the local sites such as the Bodrum Castle museum only stopping for lunch at a sea side restaurant. 

Sea side restaurant, we were sitting
right at the edge, if we wanted we
could have fished for our meal.

On the boat at divers bay a hour ride from Bodrum harbour

On our second day we booked a boat ride that takes us around the bays and beaches around the Bodrum peninsula and neighboring islands and I have got to say it was a really good time. The boat was playing club tunes while hopping from bay to bay in some of the most gorgeous waters you could ever hope to swim in. I was in the water pretty much every time we stopped, and on our second stop I got my hands on a pair of goggles and got to check out the aquatic life (pretty epic, wish I had a water proof camera, birthday present anyone?). Our last day in Bodrum was unplanned, we loved the city so much we decided to stay the morning and leave early in the evening. Just before we headed to the bus station we saw some men in traditional wear with instruments getting out of a bus curious, we stuck around to watch turns out one of the local families was having a parade for their first son becoming a man (the kid was around 10-11 years old). I thought “oh that’s pretty awesome” till Sadeed told me what it actually meant… let’s just say the kid was only happy for the time being, and won’t be in a couple of hours (for those that couldn’t read between the lines the kid is getting circumcised). I was surprised for a couple of reasons one because I was not aware of the ceremony and second because the kid was pretty old as far as I am aware the ceremony is held earlier in most religions. After that interesting turn of events we turned back to the hotel and headed to Izmir.

Highlights of Bodrum

-Amazing Water

-Amazing night life

-Amazing people

-All round good times

Izmir,Ephesus and Troy will be covered in my next post

Cheers

Raja 

On the Road (1)

Hey folks as you can see I decided to make some changes to my blog, I decided I would rather have my own picture from my travels rather than someone else’s. I have chosen a picture I took in Alberta, in the badlands while on SIFT (student Industry Field Trip) last year, and I think it portrays the blog/title perfectly.

Ruins on the side of the road.

A skylight in one of the standing watchtowers.

The past week has been quite exciting, we went to Cannakale twice, both times was a night out on the town but each had their unique experiences. The first, we went on a spur of the moment just to unwind after a long work day. This outing was the first time I had any seafood (shocking I know) and the mussels were fresh, to no surprise (the sea was literally five meters from where we were sitting) and tasted amazing. The blue-black mussels are sold by street vendors on the waterfront and can be delivered right to your table in any waterfront cafe/pub. They were displayed so simply yet so elegantly, with the shells open just enough to reveal the stuffed mussel. The rice stuffing contained crushed nuts (pine, I think) and was ever so slightly herbed but not enough to overpower the taste of the mussel itself. After a squeeze of the lemon we started to devour these morsels of goodness, the top shell is used as a scoop to spoon out the bottom shell followed by slurping the bottom shell filled with the lemon flavoured juices (sorry, but no pictures). Our second visit to Cannakale was somewhat a last minute addition to other plans. We planned on hitting the road after work on Friday to practice our photography skills and get more familiar with our cameras before our vacation started. We left camp around 6:30 and drove towards Cannakale; about ten km outside of Cannakale, a hundred meters from the side of the road were ruins, known as Atikhisar Kalesi or Gavur Hisar. The ruins are from ottoman times, not much information is available on the ruins, as it seems the ruins are not visited often except for the occasional bush party (beer bottles and camp fires being the evidence) and travellers like us. The ruins looked beautiful with the sun setting to the west. After the sun had set we headed to Cannakale for a night of fun.

Time for some fun? 

Ice Cream (Dondurma) and Kadif (baklava) I mentioned it
in a previous post, looks like normal ice cream
but its so much better. 

On a more informative note I wanted to give a little sneak peak to the planned route/trip we are leaving on tomorrow night. Friday evening we will be leaving after work and travelling to Cannakale to catch an overnight bus to Marmaris. We will spend a day in Marmaris sightseeing and scouring the local beaches for the seafood, we have heard so much about. On June 24th we will be heading to the island of Rhodes for a day trip from Rhodes we will either travel directly to Bodrum by ferry or go back to Marmaris and take the bus. Once in Bodrum we will be going on several hikes or day trips to beautiful peninsulas around the region. From Bodrum we leave for Selcuk which is near to Ephesus, spending a half a day to check out the ruins we will be catching a bus to Izmir and spending a day or two in the region visiting Cesme, a small coastal town near Izmir. From there we will head back to Cannakale and depending on how much time we have left we could visit Gallipolis or head back to worksite. So, in a nutshell we will be travelling the west coast of Turkey along the Mediterranean’s blue waters.  That’s the plan for now but it will most likely change.

ıstakoz (Lobster)

Field day photo from drill site. 

I have been in turkey for about three weeks, and I have a dozen or so Turkish words in my vocabulary, to show for it. I know I shouldn't be bragging but for those of you who know me, know this is a pretty big accomplishment as I am really bad at learning new language, proof? I have stayed in three countries for a sufficient period of time (5 +) and I have yet to speak a proper sentence in Kiswahili or French (I have learned French since I was 5 and stopped learning it in grade nine). As for my mother tongue; Telugu, I can get by speaking and understanding it but that’s all, it’s all thanks to my parents being diligent and continuously speaking it in the house.

 Anyways that’s besides’, the point I promised you in my last post that I would give you the details about my time here and you shall have them. My first week or so was pretty repetitive with work, but with Sadeed arriving in camp it got a bit more lively due to our conversations, where we 'discuss' anything from geology to culture and food of the area (not only is it fun but we end up learning new stuff through our 'conversations').  We are told they are also a good source of entertainment to our colleagues that could understand us.  As one of them put it  "it's like watching TV" our combined effort to understand Turkish and trying to communicate with our colleagues ensued in some pretty comedic situations where we try to translate our conversation/words through acting, drawing, Google or all of these combined. The favourite one around the office seems to be our performance of trying to imitate a lobster to our co-worker to learn the Turkish word for it, which by the way is 'ıstakoz'(just in case you were in this part of the world and craving a lobster).

 A few days after Sadeed arrived we were treated to a festival happening in a nearby town, Çan. Similar to a spring festival the festival was a host to a mini bazaar, rides for all ages, and gypsy game vendors. Where the customers could win an assortment of prizes ranging from from cute little plushies, all the way to cigarettes, truly an experience for all ages (I am not joking about the cigarettes). 

I love big rides as much as the next person, but I am not really a fan of ones that look like they are about to break down at any moment and send us hurtling to our death (final fantasy style). Although everyone on the rides seemed to enjoying themselves I chickened out and went for the one that looked somewhat safe; the Ranger, one of the bigger rides. I decided if it did break down I would be somewhat protected by the roll cage around the passenger compartment.

Ranger is to the left, and if you look carefully you can notice a game
vendor trying to fix the ride while it is still operating
 (Picture by Sadeed Hassan)

 After leaving the carnival we went to a little baklava shop to have some... well, Baklava and Ice Cream. Let me tell you it was one of the best pieces of baklava I have had ever! However the star of the show was the handmade ice cream. This ice cream would beat the crap out of any Ben and Jerry’s, Haagen-Dazs or high end gelato parlour we get back in Canada. I can continue writing about the ice cream but I won't, because I won’t be able to do it justice. After this we went to a cafe where customers could smoke sheesha, it was pretty good as well, but I am no expert  so I wont really go into it that much.

Daily life on the Cobbled streets 

Clock tower inCanakkale 

On Friday we went to Çanakkale, the biggest city, closest to us to apply for resident permits as we are continuously working for the next couple of months. We quickly got our pictures taken and application forms filled in and decided to tour the town. Walking on the cobbled streets on our way to the waterfront reminded me of old Montreal. After taking our share of touristy pictures we walked through the shopping district, we got some sweets/ desserts for ourselves and our colleagues back at campsite to enjoy. Just before heading back, we were taken back to the waterfront and shown the wooden horse used in Troy (the movie), which was pretty awesome.

Panorama of Kilithbahir castle and town opposite Canakkale / west side of the Dardanelles strait. 

That’s it for my life so far in Turkey but let me tell you it will get a lot more exciting during our vacation which is coming up pretty fast (two weeks). Although, as it is looking right now it won’t be a vacation, it will be more of an adventure, and I cannot wait for it. But more of that in my next post.

Cheers

Raja 

Jeoloji! (Geology!)

                In the past week at the work site I have learned quite a bit, some from articles but most of it from colleagues here at Alamos. It has been somewhat of a quick learning curve but my time with St Andrews Gold Fields last summer has contributed greatly to my quick learning experience at Alamos.  Over the past week I have been to the field three times: the first was an environmental and safety tour at one of the projects (Kirazli); the second time, I was taken out to the field to have a look at the project area I will most likely be working on (Agi Dagi); and lastly I went out to line up a new drill and funnily enough we ran into to some trouble where the cleared out area was too small with drilling rods giving us a wrong azimuth reading, so we waited for what seems most of the day for the drillers to relocate the drilling rods so our reading won’t be affected. Back at the core shack I quickly refreshed my skills to log core and picked some up.

General 

Fig 1

Turkey is the meshing pot between two different continents, Europe and Asia and can be considered an amalgamation of multiple plates. Turkey can be geologically divided into three main regions: the Pontides, the Anatolides-Taurides and the Arabian Platform (Keiten, 1966) these regions are separated by sutures which are zones once occupied by the paleo Tethys and the Neo-Tethys oceans.

The collision of the African, Arabian, and Indian plates with the Eurasian plate during the Tertiary (65-1.5 Mya) helped create the Alpine mountain range, which stretches from the Atlantic to the Himalayas. The event heavily reworked the sedimentary layers deposited by the prehistoric Tethys -oceans. The intense reworking and uplift of the region was accompanied by strong volcanic and plutonic activity followed closely by extensive faulting in the quaternary. Recent seismic activity provides us with evidence that Turkey is still quite active as the African plate converges with the Eurasian plate and the Anatolian plate escapes towards the west and southwest through the North Anatolian fault zone and the East Anatolian fault zone.


Biga Penninsula

Fig 2

The Biga Penninsula is located to the south of Istanbul with the Marmara Sea to the north and the Aegean to the south and west, with the Dardanelles strait connecting the two oceans. Biga peninsula is located in one of the three tectonic domains of the Pontides, the Sakarya which was amalgamated with the Istanbul and Strandja domains during the mid cretaceous. The peninsula is bound by the Intra-pontide suture to the north and the Izmir-Ankara-Erzincan suture to the south with several small north east trending fault zones parallel to the north Anatolian fault.

* I could go on for quite a bit about the volcanic deposits and depositional histories but I will skip into the mineralization seen in the area*

Mineralization

The deposit being explored by Alamos is a high sulfidation epithermal deposit. In general an epithermal deposit is formed in hydrothermal systems and is likely to occur in volcanic  arcs; which includes island and continental arcs, associated with subduction zones. The deposits form at shallow depths, ~1km or less and are hosted mainly in Volcanic or sedimentary rocks. There are two types of epithermal deposits, 1) low sulfidation, 2) high sulfidation; the two styles are formed in contrasting volcanic environment with distinctly different chemical composition. Low sulfidation deposits form from dilute-near neutral pH fluids, high sulfidation deposits contrast low sulfidation deposits where acidic fluids generated in a volcanic hydrothermal environment which leech the host rock through structural weakness in the rock such as faults.

Fig 2: Taken from Alamos Gold technical report 2010, pg 38

Faults play important roles where they controlled sedimentation and volcanic activity during Oligocene–Early Miocene period, they provided a pathway for andesites and dacites to form the Kirazali volcanic deposits. Alteration pattern in the two areas are typical of a high sulfidation epithermal deposit with silicification surrounded by argillic and advance argillic with minor propolytic sections. The earliest silicification is identified as grey, massive, sugary and vuggy silica. In other regions acid leeching process by the fluids have resulted in vuggy and cavity-riddled grey silica. Vein filled fractures with pyrite/oxides and clay are representative of high grade gold and silver. Underlying the silca zones is an argillic zone; the alteration is typically represented by fine-grained, white-grey, illite/kaolinite and various other clays which are representative of argillite. On a local scale advanced argillite alteration is present overprinting argillite and is located in intermediate zones between the silica cap and the argillic zone.  Advance argillite contains:  alunite, pyrophyllite, halloysite, dickite and kaolinite, which are indentified and differentiated from argillic sections with PIMA (spectral) sampling.

There it is the general geology of the region and the projects at Alamos. Hope I made everything clear, if you have any questions feel free to ask away! I will post another geology related post in a few weeks

until then it will generally be about my life here at work.

Hope I didn't 'bore' you too much :P  My next post will be more general but in a couple of weeks I will really get to the 'core' of the matter :P Hope most of you got the hidden gems :D otherwise my ingenuity has gone to waste .

Cheers,

Raja Yarra

Tekrar Merhaba! (Hello again!)

Hello all

Although I promised to write as soon as I got into Turkey, It was a bit hectic and I was enjoying myself too much to sit down and write. I arrived in Turkey on May 22nd around 4:50pm without hassle, by the time I got through customs and to the hotel it was 7. I stayed the night at the Armada Hotel which is located in Sultan Ahmet district of Istanbul, its terrace top restaurant overlooks the Sea of Marmara and has views of the Hagia Sophia and the Blue Mosque. After a quick shower I decided to grab a quick bite to eat, but skipped out on the roof top restaurant and opted to hit the streets and look for a nice little restaurant and go as local as I can (Anthony Bourdain Style). Little to my surprise a five minute walk from the Hotel I found a small restaurant, it was more like a kitchen built into the side of a building  with couple of tables and chairs set up as a patio. I avoided the brains and gut’s Anthony is so fond of and decided on fish. The fish was so fresh that I bet they probably caught it 10 minutes before they served it to me. It was perfectly steamed in its own juices on a bed of diced tomatoes mushrooms and some veggies with a serving of rice. They also served fresh bread with a dipping plate of olive oil infused with chilli flakes and pieces of cheese. (Yea, I know what you’re thinking ‘what is a geology blog doing talking about food?’ Well I like food to!)

After a delicious seafood dinner I went for a stroll on the cobbled streets lined with restaurants on either side. Most catered to the travellers with a combined menu of Turkish food for the adventurous and Western fare for… well the not so adventurous. I was able to see the Blue Mosque from the streets but I decided I would visit it at another time when I wasn't half falling asleep and as I had to wake up in a couple of hours to catch the ferry I decided to turn back and turn in for the night.

The Ferry ride to Bandirma lasted about an hour and a half, and the car ride from Bandirma to the camp site was another two hours. The Scenery was amazing, rolling hills on one side and the Aegean to the other, further inland we travelled through the hills and passed small towns tucked away on the hillside only noticeable because of the bright red roof tiles on the houses. I got into camp just before lunch and after a quick tour of the camp site we sat down and had an amazing home cooked meal. I settled into camp fairly quick as it is very comfortable. I will be sharing my room with Sadeed, the other student hired by Alamos; I knew Sadeed beforehand and it was by complete coincidence that we would work at the same company this summer.   

That’s it for now folks. I will update you again on what I have been doing these past few days and more on the geology of the area in my next post.

Cheers

Raja Yarra