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| A piece of Cerro Koi |
My holiday in Catalunya opened up my eyes a little bit wider to the idea of Geodiversity and, with a bit of collaborative effort, I don’t think that it is too hard to produce some ‘offbeat’ publicity material that highlights this – especially in a place that is already popular with tourists.
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| The River Paraguay |
In
a place like Paraguay, things are completely different. As a landlocked country
in the centre of South America, with a recent history as a longstanding one
party state, it is not an obvious tourist attraction.
Although
that I knew that I was going to the Iguazú Falls, I
didn’t think about the geology that I would encounter until I
looked out of the window when the plane was coming in to land. I was struck
by just how red the land looked and it was how I imagined the weathering of the rocks to be in a sub-tropical climate, as I had read
in textbooks.
The spectacular sunsets over Asunción - the capital city - would not be the same, unless the red dust was hanging in the air.
With
my curiosity aroused, I set out to try and find a
geological map, as a keepsake to remind me of my visit. In
England, this is so easy to do, but not in Paraguay; however, I finally found
one, only to discover that its incredible size prevented it from being easily sent
in the post, let alone going back with me to England on the plane.
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| Cerros Koi y Choroi |
Along
the way, the geology students at the Universidad Nacional de Asunción were keen to talk, and their tutors were very helpful too. Taking their advice,
I visited Cerros Koi y Choroi, one of only three sites in the world where this geological phenomenon is known.
Without more information to help me, I just wandered around this fantastic site and it took a considerable amount of research, back in the UK, before I could confirm that this is a sandstone.
