Home on the Mountain

Most topaz miners 'commute' to and from their villages below. But a few live on the moutain-top, where small fruit orchards and vegetable gardens have been planted.

Our guide took us to the house of one man, who claimed to be more than seventy-years old. There we visited with him, took a look at his tools and the stones that he had recovered but rejected, unsellable quartz and topaz. Some of the discarded stones looked like rose quartz, another co-occuring mineral to aquamarine!