A very beautiful doubly terminated crystal of beryl that grades from heliodor near the top, to aquamarine near the base.  

Despite this being my fourth trip to the country, I had only ever come away with a few beryl samples previously-- usually nothing particularly gemmy.  I don’t think it would be an exaggeration to claim that the pieces recovered from this pocket are probably some of the best beryl specimens to come from Madagascar in the last 10-15 years.   

There is some sub-surface pocket dirt-- this is visible more on one side than the other.  I have included pictures of both sides (to see the dirtier side, see the pictures below the description and at the very bottom).  It is somewhat difficult to get the color right in the pictures, so I have photographed it with a few different backgrounds-- the super bright image is an iPhone picture in direct winter sunlight-- as you can see, the thing really glows if you light it correctly, and the effect can be recreated with a well-placed LED.