We started our day with a rainy 1.5 hour drive from our hotel to get to the Cullinan Diamond Mine. A lot of us began to regret leaving our rain jackets behind in the hotel.
Once we arrived we signed our waivers and began to be briefed on an introduction of the mine and what to expect. We were given PPE (personal protective equipment) which included a hard hat and a safety vest, which was color coded to mark visitors (blue hard hats) instead of mine workers (orange hard hats). Due to the rain we were also provided with rain coats after a couple of minutes leaving many of us wet.
During the introduction we were able to learn a lot about the mine, its background, and how it came to be. An important rule was that we weren’t allow to pick up any of the rocks during the tour. In 1902 Thomas Cullinan discovered the area where present day Cullinan Mine is located. Once a kimberlite pipe was located mining began officially in 1903. At the time no special equipment or machinery was used and the majority of the work was performed by laborers using pickaxes and shovels. At the times the mine was 32 hectares and 189 meters deep. In 1905 the biggest gem was found. Currently the mine is over 40 hectares and mining for the extraction of diamonds is taking place at 857 meters below the surface. There are usually about 100 workers present in the mine when it comes to extracting the diamonds. They get to the area of mining using a single elevator which can hold up to 50 people and takes about 15 minutes to get from the surface to the bottom.
The Cullinan Mine is famous for being the mine where the largest gem diamond was ever recovered. This diamond was 3,106 cts. Petra Diamonds has been the operator of Cullinan Mine since 2008. They are expecting to continue mining until 2030. We also learned the 4 Cs used to classify diamonds: clarity, color, carat, and cut.
After learning all this information about the mine we continued with our surface tour of Cullinan mine. We were able to see the outside of different facilities and equipment used for processing the stones to extract the diamonds. We then made our way to the massive mine which is slowly growing due to erosion. We were able to get a good viewpoint of the mine and we all took pictures. Throughout our tour our tour guide also pointed out multiple rocks along our path with diamonds in them. Some of us wondered why these rocks would just be left if the workers knew there were diamonds in them while others wondered how we could take it and walk out with it.
This concluded our tour. We then walked back through and spotted monkeys on our way back roaming the streets and scavenging for food. We made our way to lunch at the restaurant As Greek As It Gets. The greek cuisine left us satisfied and ready for the drive back to our hotel.
Blog by Hristo Toshev