ANDILAMENA Madagascar new sapphire and ruby mine discovery GGGems.com NEWS


	Ah! The rainy season…



	Hostilities had begun in the highlands when John went to Mahaiza, the
	Mecca of highwaymen, which abound in these regions. Also the Mecca of
	aquamarines, of rubellites and of every pegmatitic rock surrounding the
	Antsirabe area.

	The first picture here attached, is a testimony of roads transformed into
	a real “Via Crucis”.

Meanwhile, Alain continued with his program.

Since the colony, Madagascar was known as Beryl Country. Today times have

changed and we readily describe the Red Island as Corundum Country. Red and Blue

are thus combined in a prose à la Stendhal turned daltonic. For the better and the

worse, Rubies and Sapphires reveal their velvetiness and their hardness.

In an era that hasn’t rung yet, we will qualify Madagascar the country of pure carbon.

The diamond, one hundred and twenty times harder than its sibling the sapphire, is

still lurking beneath the sandstones or in dykes under unsuspected depths.



	When it was rumoured that a new alluvial mine of sapphires and rubies had been
	revealed, John changed his course.
	By a coincidence that only nature knows the secret, the discovery happened the
	day of our arrival on the island.
	But here, we enter into a fourth dimension in space and time, time that was
	needed for our adventurer to reach his spot. Twenty five hours of a wet track
	winding the border of the east coast’s rainforests.


		Andilamena, it is at this place, in October 2000, where an important
		ruby deposit was discovered. It caused a rush that definitely
		transformed this big rural village lost in the middle of nowhere.

		The relations that John tied with gemstone miners and sellers present
		at the time of the rush in 2001, thanks to his mastery of the Malagasy
		language, permitted him to glean a lot of information.

		These discoveries, distanced a several dozen kilometres from the
		village, have unearthed hundreds of kilos of rubies inside some veins
		of feldspar turned endomorphic which disaggregated into the form of
		kaolin.
		At the time, miners dug up to eight meters in depth inside the veins
		which were then followed by many mica minerals. Some pockets, in the
		shape of lentils, produced up to two hundred kilos of gems which were
		quickly acquired by Thais who had flocked to the region. Sometimes
		purchased as a star ruby, i.e. cabochon quality, these rubies of
		remarkable colour and dimensions would, according to the Malagasy
		who were present, have enriched their buyers.

		In 2002, a new sapphire deposit was discovered at a place called
		Andribabe.
		It’s in 2004 when Alain was able to observe remarkable samples of
		royal blue sapphires from Andribabe.



On the spot, John found many
friends and acquaintances
forged throughout previous
decades. Some on a sapphire
deposit in the North in 1996,
some in the Ilakaka, deposit,
in 1999-2000, etc.



	Once again, John applied his technique: he paid
	a disproportionate price for the first stone that
	fell into his hands thus attracting all the others
	towards him. This provoked a wrath in some
	Asian competitors who had rushed to the
	place of the discovery.













			Vehicles suffer when
			reaching Andilamena in
			this season. This modest
			garage offers a welcome
			service, thanks to this old
			man. A remake of Charlie
			Chaplin’s Modern Times.

Alaotra formations:

Crystalline schists:
The petrographic bottom is characterized by an
abundance of pyroxeno-amphibolic formations in a set in
which gneissico-migmatitic rocks are found as follows:
- The gneisses at hypersthene are well represented on
the North and East bank of Lake Alaotra:
- Amphibolites and shale feldspathics pyroxenites
appearing frequently in patches or enclaves to form
heterogeneous migmatites of épibolites type (rocks
consist of interbedded veins of aplites beds per bed).
- The amphibole gneiss, amphibole and biotite, or biotite
alone can pass locally to banded migmatites.
- Locally surmicaceous gneiss and mica becoming
micaschists and containing shreds of muscovite mica
schists between the rivers Onibe and Ivondro.
- Finally, beds of quartzite or magnetite quartzite
distributed of very irregular manner : magnetite quartzites
show a bigger development in the region of
Imerimandroso and Andilamena peninsula, on the shores of
Lake Alaotra; white quartzites more or less crystallized are
quite rare and form thin beds.
We can distinguish an aluminous series and
calco-magnesian series. Alumino-silicate series is not
uniformly distributed, but appears quite clearly located at
the base of the group of Alaotra. This series is represented
by sillimanite quartzites and gneisses more or less quartzic
biotite, sillimanite and garnet, very often these gneiss are
graphitic.
Calc-magnesian series develops on the western bank of
the group Alaotra, especially south of Ambatondrazaka
where diopside gneisses and marbles are of great
importance.
- Gabros have a significant development in the group Alaotra, their main feature is their perfect match with

Rubies from this region have been found in alluvium,
but probably come from endomorpheous feldspatic
rocks. In fact, we frequently found corundums showing
flat faces in feldspatic rocks in Madagascar.

GEOLOGICAL SURVEY OF THE ANDILAMENA NORTHERN REGION

The North- Andilamena area aload to establish a geological connection between the Lake Alaotra

region and the Mandritsara region. Five petrographic units were distinguished. At the base we find a

graphitic series with sillimanite and garnet with many leptynites banks in the south, it has been found

on the eastern edge of the studied area only. Above it, there are biotite migmatites with small

hornblende passages : they flush heavily on the Maroadabo sheet, and reappear in anticlinal position

throughout the western limit of the studied area.

They are locally overlain by a small graphitic series with marbles, gneisses at pyroxene and wernérites.

Epibolites and amphibolitic gneisses form the foothills of the Bemarivo.

Finally, in the Tanananifololahy region, pyroxeno-amphibolites are associated with more or less metamorphic

gabbros. The three bottom sets ( graphitic basic series, biotite migmatites, graphitic series at cipolin of

Marovato) are attached to the System of Graphite; épibolites and hornblende gneisses as well as pyroxeno

- amphibolites are considered belonging to the Vohibory System.

The area covered by the sheet is formed essentially by gneissic-migmatitic rocks, bit affected by

granitisation in the central zone and including on the contrary many granite benches interbedded on

the eastern and western borders.


Days passed and a sound, or rather, an intoxicating melody, came to the ears of our
protagonists: a new deposit of sapphires of an exceptional blue colour was brought
to light in the Didy area (which I mentioned in my previous article).
Then, simultaneously, a discovery of pigeon blood rubies was announced at 4 miles
from the sea border, on the east coast... Everyone broke camp.

It is thus how gem research is conducted in Madagascar today, a country that has
become the leading producer of sapphires and rubies in the world.

At the time when the mobile phone was still in its infancy, it took more than two
years before the discovery of an exceptional sapphire, which I and John made in
south-eastern Madagascar, had been disclosed.

It was Andranondambo. The quality of this sapphire remained a model in the
gemmology field.
Today, this sapphire is compared to those of Kashmir.
It is in fact during the occasion of our presence on the island, late 2013-2014, that
we also learned about the discovery of a new sapphire deposit in the Andranondambo
region.


	By clicking on the following link you can read an article written by Alain on what
	certainly remains the discovery of the century in sapphire and ruby history:

	http://www.gggems.com/news_didy_sapphire_ruby_discovery.htm

	Unearthed in 2012, in Madagascar, this deposit, discovered in the heart of the
	rainforest, has produced the largest pigeon blood rubies in the world. The icing
	on the cake? They do not require any treatment. Exactly the same goes for all
	exceptionally coloured sapphires that have escaped the place, a natural reserve
	rapidly sealed off by the authorities.