Mining Indaba Conference - Day 2

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Today was a good day. Started a bit rough with trying to get a taxi to the waterfront. A 10 minute wait turned into a half hour with several phone calls from the hotel hostess to the taxi company, with assurances each time, the taxi was "just around the corner". We finally did arrive at the conference and managed to catch a talk. The talk was by Alex Davidson, now a VP with Barrick Gold, the largest gold mining company in the world. It was fun to watch as both Chris and I worked for Alex years ago, back in our Minnova days. Didn't get a chance to say hi, maybe tomorrow.

After the talk, we had a meeting with a couple of representatives from Finning. Very nice guys with lots of expertise in West Africa. From there, we wandered a bit through the trade show and talked with the Coffey Mining folks. They were kind enough to invite us to their annual dinner tomorrow night at the waterfront. It will be a treat as it is at the Aquarium at the waterfront. We had the conference lunch, a chicken tandoori curry - delicious! It is always fun to try to eat at this conference as there are many buffet tables, oodles of stand up and dine tables, and thousands of people trying to find places to eat. We found a seat on some stairs, which made balancing a plate and eating much easier!

In the afternoon, we joined Klaus and Greg for a meeting at their rental house to go over some geophysics data. This was a lot of fun as I was able to play in MapInfo with geophysics data. Greg was able to give me some pointers on manipulating colours and views to better see the data. The rental house they are in is wonderful. It had a rooftop terrace from which I took some nice view shots (will try to upload after I type). We started to drive back to the conference, when we hit so much traffic. We sat in it for about 5 minutes, only moving about 3 car lengths, when it was decided that Klaus, Chris and I would walk back to the conference (only a 5 minute walk) and Greg would return the car and then walk over. Once back at the conference, Chris met with Rick and Nana of Coffey Mining and had a productive meeting. Then, the fun ride back to the hotel.

We left the conference centre just after 6pm, with a young taxi driver who had no idea where our hotel was located. Finally we came up with a road nearby, that he recognized, and then we dug out the map that came with our conference schedule. We did make it back, and it didn't take as much time as I thought it was going to take.

Another hour later, we were on our way to the Senate dinner at Manolo's restaurant. The restaurant is a block and a half away from the hotel, and is a very, very nice restaurant. I started with the asparagus and Chris with the Ostrich carpachio (it tasted good, smoky tasting, similar to a smoked salmon, and similar in texture to lox). Both Chris and I had the "heart of rump" (steak) for our main course and then chocolate mousse for dessert. We dined with Paul, Bernadette, Neil and I didn't catch Neil's wife's name. We had a great time and ended the evening with many bad jokes. It is amazing how international jokes can be. Some that were told by Bernadette, were similar to ones we have heard or told in Canada. Neil and partner are from the UK originally and now live in Denver. Bernadette was born in Toronto and her and Paul currently live in Johannesburg, although will be moving to Spokane in May. Everyone was so friendly and nice.

It was a great day, with business and pleasure mixing so nicely. Now I will try to upload some photos and crawl into bed (it is now 12:30am our time).

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Photos

View from the terrace
From the meeting with the geophysicists, we took a quick trip up to their roof top terrace to see the view of the waterfront.

Vegetation
Neat looking trees on the slope above the meeting site.

Outside the Conference Centre
A view outside the far end of the conference centre. Note the Canadian Flag.