Update: Trip to Tuscany

English

Pentecosi Lake, Garfagnana Tuscany
Photo by C. Roe

The purpose of my trip to Tuscany was part of the geology program I am doing for this semester, here in Italy. It is divided into two parts. The first one is to learn about other geology features found in Italy ranging from fossils to natural resources. The second part takes a big part of the trip where we continue to explore more on the formation of the Apennines from a fraction of the northern Apennines in Garfagnana (Garfañana) valley in the Tuscany Region.

Just to clarify, I actually did not update my first week of this program and so let me try to summarize it as best as I can. So what we did for the first week was the San Vittore Mapping Project. We had a four-day fieldtrips in San Vittore, which is a fraction of the larger town of Genga in Marche Region. A final geologic map of the location with its cross-section was produced. The geologic map of San Vittore is neatly colored to represent the difference formation of bedrock found in the Northwest part of the Apennines. Different spots within the location were colored based on the observations of the outcrops but some Swiss-styled mapping was also useful to clear up some fuzzy spots. Strikes and dips of bedrocks were measured and recorded to help us reconstruct a vertical view (cross-section) of the overall geologic setting of the area.

We left Coldigioco on Thursday, Aug 30th at around 8.30am. The normal drive hours from our place to Garfagnana, Tuscany, takes about about 5 hours. Since we also did some geotourism along the way, it took us almost 2 days to get to Garfagnana. We visited some protected areas, museums and small towns. Don't worry, we did sleep within the two days of travel.

At around 12 midday, we did our first stop at Centro di Paleontologia Vegetale della Foresta Fossile in Dunarobba, Umbria. Basically this Paleontology center has a museum and an open forest fossil contain 1 – 3 meters trunks of ancient trees. I am not really sure what chemicals responsible to keep these trees from decay but according to our guide, it was a type of mud that flooded and covered this region back in time and hence acted like a casing, preventing the decomposition of these trees. See the picture below.

We spent roughly two hours in Dunarroba, including lunch right at a small cafetaria belongs to the Paleontology Center. We then continued drive for about three hours until we reached a small town called Pitigliano. We spent about 30 – 45 minutes in this town, walking around taking pictures, having some gelato, etc.

From pitigliano, we then drove to an Archeological park called Citta del Tufo (the City of Tufo) in Sorano, Tuscany. This archeological site presents an ancient city of different buildings and tombs built by the Etruscan back before the Roman time in Italy (~700 BC). What they did was basically carve out their buildings and tombs out from the rock on the mountain side and built up this city right on it. It all thanks to the tufo rock (tuff: consolidated volcanic ash). Besides seeing the ruins of the city and tombs of the Etruscan, there are also information board ins each ruins where it provides digital construction of how the city and/or the tombs  look like in the past. You can see the picture below.

From Pitigliano, we drove for about one and a half hour to a hotel in a very small town. The hotel we stayed called Laconda Laudomia. I think we arrived at the hotel around 7.15pm. We checked-in, took showers and went down for supper. This is the best part after a long drive from Coldigioco. Obviously, as usual, we have Italian-style dinner. We started with slices of salted bread with cheese, olive oil and salt, plus fizzy water. Then we had our primi piatti or first dish (with white wine, of course), followed by secondi piatti and finally dolce or sweetness. I was contented and went to bed around 9.30pm.

On Friday morning, Aug 31st, we woke up around 7am, packed, took our bags to the car and had breakfast at the hotel. We left around 8.30am and our first stop for the day was the hot spring. I don’t remember how long we drove but I think it is pretty close to the small town we stayed. The spring has a turquoise color and is very appealing to see from far. In fact, it looks like the water in the Disney World. Once we arrived, almost everybody went in and enjoy the hot spring with its strong smell (due to the presence of sulfur). Sandro (our instructor), Laura (my geology prof from Luther), Carli, Rachel, Jordan and myself did not go into the hot spring. I personally did not want to go into the water because of its smell. Besides, it was very cloudy too. Just as they went in, it started to rain so heavily for about 15 minutes and there was no shade nearby except a small restaurant nearby. I just don’t want to be wet or have my clothes wet while traveling. It is very inconvenient to me, especially when I haven’t reached my final destination.

Thermal Spring in Saturnia, Tuscany

From the hot spring, our next destination was the Geothermal Museum in a town called Larderello. Basically this town is named after a French entrepreneur, Francois De Lardell who first built a factory to exploit the geothermal water to produce boric acid. Not until 1904 that Prince Ginori-Conti harnessed the geothermal steam to produce electricity. From that point up to this present time, the steam from this geothermal has been using to produce electricity. Actually, the company used to use the steam directly to turn the turbine but it actually caused corrosion to any metal parts of the turbine and therefore, at present, it uses the steam to heat water, and the steam from the hot water is then used to run the turbine and hence producing electricity. Below you can see the video I recorded using my phone (pretty bad quality tho) to show you how strong the natural steam that comes from 5000 meters underground.

The tour to see the natural steam concluded our visit in Larderello. We continued driving for about 4 hours and finally arrived in Garfaganana. It was around 7.30pm when we got there. After dropped out stuffs in dorms, as usual, we had our dinner in Italian style and rest before we start another interesting geology adventure the next day.