Day 0: First look at Indikolapelessa

Hi Everyone,

Sorry for the delay in notes, I am still having trouble getting the pictures to work within experiment.com, so pictures will be coming soon! For now I suppose Ill just have to paint a word picture..

We arrived in Sri lanka on the morning of August 4th, which im sure was a beautfiul morning for those people who had showered sometime in the last day and hadnt just gotten off several international flights! But after a quick shower and a few stops in and around Colombo, we went off to our first field site, Indikolapelessa. For that night, we got near the site after sunset, so we checked into our hotel for the night and slept. The next morning, we were off to meet our collaborator and local guide Meththika Vithanage at our lodging for the next few days. After a quick turnaround, we headed out to get a good look at the first site, Indikolapelessa. I could tell when we reached the right area as the fairly dense tropical trees gave way to an open field very suddenly. We drove down the western side of the outcrop and came to our first stop. What appeared in sattelite images as a small, brightly-colored area turned out to be a beautiful outcrop of rock, possibly dug out by the locals for material. This was our first look at the serpentinite rock, in section, with its surrounding material and the picture was....confusing. As geologists do, we swarmed all over the outcrop for a good few hours, sampling rocks, discssing theories, and drawing out maps of the outcrop. The outcrop was very deeply weathered, in fact the rocks immediately adjacent to the serpentine were crumbling in our hands. Even in retrospect, we didnt see any more rocks like the ones in the lower parts of this outcrop, so we are awaiting the samples to learn more about it! After the outcrop, we headed to the southern part of the area to take our first soil samples, and managed to collect most of the samples we needed! The open ground on top of the serpentine made it easy to traverse, helped by the local farmers that had recently burned the land for grazing. Most of the way through our sampling, we ran into yet another outcrop! Unlike the first, which was something of a ditch, this outcrop was a rocky hill in the center of the open area. This is where we saw something that may be important: cobbles (golf-ball sized rocks) of somewhat rounded Quartz and Feldspar. The important thing is that these minerals are NOT found in serpentine, so how did they get here, at the top of this hill? We didnt figure that out for a few more days, so neither will you!

See you again tomorrow!

Don & Allison