Sueños del Caribe Blog

I was engaged in one of my favorite pass times, trolling the internet, when I came across this blog written by one Ronald Hill.

It deals with the the Atlantic Coast of Nicaragua, an area which I visited a number of times, but not nearly enough, in my three years living in the country. Most social commentary in Nicaragua is poor, the product of a very small lens of perspective or heavily politically influenced. The potential for quality documentation and commentary on the plight of people in the small, but very diverse country, is huge, but few and far between are those who can offer insight which stems from both involved personal experience and wide perspective.

I recall my first visit to the Southern Atlantic coast nearly two and a half years ago and how captivated I was with the area. It was interesting to see how in such a relatively short distance just how much the country and its people could change. Poverty is abound in every corner of the country, some more than others, but the majority live day to day, consistently in a struggle against the few Cordobas they may carry in their pocket at any given time. In the little neighborhood where I lived, most were in an economic conundrum at any given time, money was a tangible representation of the constant struggle that is life and most, from what I saw, had a difficult time dealing with it.

This still applies to the Caribbean coast, once again some areas more than others, but there does seem to exist a paradigm missing from their pacific compatriots (or, the "Spanish" as they call them), one that allows them become relieved from the pressure of the situation, at least for a period of time. Basically, that laid back Caribbean attitude, where items of stress and hard ship can be dismissed by saying "alright", or one of the other words they seemed to use as a general response.

In point, both those from the Pacific and the Atlantic suffer the consequences of not always having what they need; stealing, violence, and further suffering are a direct result of these situations on both sides, but those on the Atlantic coast seemed to deal with it better.

Like I said, my time spent on the Atlantic coast is not enough, nor was not deep enough, to give any meaningful commentary on the matter, but this guy is, go read his blog if you are interested.

 http://hillron.blogspot.ca/

Calibre Mining (V.CXB)

Seeing as I'm in Nicaragua right now, I figured that now would be a good time to do a small write up on one of the my favorite juniors working in Nicaragua, Calibre Mining (V.CXB), trading on the Toronto Venture exchange.

Calibre is a Vancouver based company working in a prolific mining area in Nicaragua called the "Mining Triangle", roughly 250 km north east of Managua. Historically, this area has produced five million oz AU, four million oz Ag, and 305 million lbs of Cu. CXB has complete ownership, or partial owner ship of a five projects in the area, three of which I consider to be of particular interest.

Borosi Concessions

The Borosi concessions contains a total of 5 deposits. At this stage in the exploration process the La Luna and the Cerro Aeropuerto deposits are the two worth mentioning. In February of 2011 an NI 43-101 report was completed for the two deposits, the results indicating inferred resources of  835,450 oz Au and 4 282 070 oz Ag.

Global Inferred Resource (using a 0.6 g/t AuEq* cutoff grade)**

	Tonnes and Grade				Total Contained Metal
Deposit	Tonnes	Gold	Silver	Au Eq*	Gold	Silver	Gold	Silver	Au Eq*
		(g/t)	(g/t)	(g/t)	(grams)	(grams)	(ounces)	(ounces)	(ounces)
Cerro Aeropuerto	6,052,000	3.64	16.16	3.89	22,013,480	97,804,750	707,750	3,144,500	757,000
La Luna	2,539,000	1.56	14.01	1.78	3,972,160	35,568,870	127,700	1,143,570	146,000
						Total	835,450	4,288,070	903,000

This image from the companies website (which I'm not sure if I can use or not...) shows the data for the two deposits. The thing I like about these numbers is that exploration is not completed on the Borosi concession, and as it stands right now, they are ~ 160,000 oz short of 1million oz Au on this property alone. With three other largely unexplored deposits on the concession (Rosita, Santa Maria, and Bonanza) it is possible that further Au/Ag deposits will be found. A small amount of exploration has been conducted on the aforementioned deposits and gold has been found at very shallow depths. These deposits also lay adjacent to old open pit mines which together has produced over 2.5 million ounces of gold.

In 2010 Calibre entered into a joint-venture agreement with B2Gold which could see BTO earning a 51% interest in Borosi concession if they spend $8 million worth of exploration costs over a 3 year period.

Siuna Project

This concession, named after the nearby town of Siuna, contains a past producing mine, La Luz, and the note worthy Cerro Potosi prospect.

The La Luz mine is a past producing mine which saw 2.3 million ounces of high grade Au (4.14 g/t) removed from it. Calibre has secured a 100% interest in the mine and I assume further exploration work will be done in the future.

The Cerro Potosi prospect, located 1 km north of the Cerro Aeropuerto deposit, seems to support near-surface gold mineralization. A 2008 drill campaign by then owner Yamaha gold highlights a 16.2 meter interecept at 4.19 g/t Au. CXB geologists say that the Cerro Potosi prospect displays the same style of mineralization as the, now water filled, La Luna Mine. A more detailed account of the geology can be found on the CXB website as long as in their April 2011 NI 43-101 technical report                                               ( http://www.calibremining.com/i/pdf/techreports/43-101-report-April-2011.pdf )

Primavera Project

With the most hype surrounding it, drill results from this project have resulted in most of the major gains and losses in sp to date. A significantly larger amount of exploration work has been done on the Primavera project than any other of Calibres' projects, and it has been identified as a large copper-gold porphyry deposit. B2Gold (T.BTO) currently holds a 51% interest in the Primavera Project, with a chance to earn more. BTO acted as operator on the last round of drill programs, deciding where to drill and what results to release.

In September 2011, after a preliminary trenching trenching campaign, CXB completed their phase 1 drill program which consisted of 3 drill holes over a total length of 668 m.

From the press release...

Drill Hole	From (m)	To (m)	Length (m)	Gold (g/t )	Copper (ppm)
PR-11-001	0.00	276.80	276.80	0.50	2,146
includes	0.00	103.00	103.00	0.85	3,240
PR-11-002	1.5	263.20	261.70	0.78	2,966
includes	1.5	209.00	207.50	0.89	3,378
includes	74.50	209.00	134.50	1.01	3,561
PR -11-003	4.00	127.85	123.85	0.65	2,752
includes	50.50	127.85	77.35	0.74	3,114

( A little note from the press release: "Drill hole PR-11-002 collared from the same platform but oriented 75 degrees from PR-11-001" )

Further drill results were released in April of 2012, which were deemed somewhat disappointing considering the high hopes for higher grade gold discovery on the porphyry deposit. As a result, the SP took a larger than 50% haircut hours following the release. Strangely enough, one of the holes, which proved to be the most impressive, was not released that round. As well, these holes were considerably large step out holes. I guess when you are the operator on a project whose results don't directly affect your own SP you can do such things. The next day, the TSX-V issued a stop trading on CXB and news was released that BTO had purchased 10% of CXB at a price over 50% less than what retail investors were paying not even 24 hours prior.

Hole	From	To	Length		Gold	Copper
					(g/t)	(ppm)
PR-11-001*	0.00	276.80	276.80		0.50	2,146
	0.00	103.00	103.00	Incl.	0.85	3,240
PR-11-002*	1.50	263.20	261.70		0.78	2,966
	1.50	209.00	207.50	Incl.	0.89	3,378
	74.50	209.00	134.50	Incl.	1.01	3,562
PR-11-003**	4.00	327.20	323.20		0.41	1,843
	4.00	150.50	146.50	Incl.	0.65	2,742
	150.50	293.00	142.50	Incl.	0.22	1,197
	293.00	327.20	34.20		0.13	683
PR-12-004					NSV***	NSV***
PR-12-005	207.50	372.50	165.00		0.31	1,713
	207.50	224.00	16.50		0.35	1,103
	224.00	270.00	46.00		0.48	3,155
	270.00	312.00	42.00		0.15	749
	312.00	372.50	60.50		0.27	1,452
PR-12-006	12.00	102.00	90.00		0.21	1,315
PR-12-007	7.70	255.00	247.30		0.22	1,097
	7.70	156.00	148.30		0.22	917
	156.00	197.00	41.00		0.34	1,760
	197.00	255.00	58.00		0.16	1,088
PR-12-008	107.65	280.00	172.35		0.48	2,401
	107.65	131.50	23.85		0.32	1,478
	131.50	187.00	55.50		0.67	3,507
	187.00	280.00	93.00		0.41	1,978
	280.00	382.50	102.50		0.23	1,139
	393.00	430.50	37.50		0.14	1,005
PR-12-009					NSV***	NSV***
PR-12-010	79.00	94.40	15.40		0.59	4,325
	81.00	86.00	5.00	Incl.	0.51	9,644

* Holes previously released (see news release dated January 20, 2012)

** Initial results for top 127.5 metres were previously released (see news release dated January 20, 2012). Hole was paused over the holiday break

*** No significant values

Note: Hole PR-12-010 was analyzed at Inspectorate's Labs in Vancouver.

CXB currently trades at 0.14.