MEXICAN OPAL SAFARI
A slide presentation by Wolf Kuehn. Pictures cannot be retrieved without prior permission.
[ Access to the Opal Mine ]
[ Workers in the Mine ]
[ Selection of Mexican Opal ]
[ Beautiful Opal Specimen ]
[ Unique Mexican Opals ]
[ Scenery around Queretaro ]
Miners inspecting some opal veins
Miner working on rock containing opal. The broken boulders are stacked in a pile to be broken down by hand - into pieces 5 cm or less to improve recovery of gem-quality material.
One can easily see the very thinly bedded rhyolite lava flows in the piece. The opal occurs as secondary filling in cavities caused by gas in the lava flow.
Here the miner is hammering on a rock which was dynamited from the quarry wall. The opal is trapped in the before mentioned cavities completely but occasionally it is found as loose nodules in the open spaces. These loose nodules, which may be "as large as a hen's egg", are generally the highest quality material.
Pieces of rough Mexican opal
Spectacular carved piece of opal
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