Gadafawa

We are back at Camp 1 after the Flamme de la Paix and the Cure Salee in InGall and have just a week to finish the work at Camp 1 before we move further north in these 110 million year old beds. The few days off in town gave everyone a chance to clean up, repack, get laundry done in Agadez, write letters, have some cold drinks. We even had "movie night"- with Road Warrior on DVD.

 Sahara by Air

Just as Mike (expedition photographer and DE2K "techie") and I were about to leave Agadez after our break, we met Sam, a French-Algerian woman pilot, who had flown to Agadez in a small Cessna airplane from Chad.

Sam greeted us with a stellar smile - and a barrage of questions about Agadez and the expedition.

French Algerian pilot Sam flies humanitarian missions in Chad,
on Niger's eastern border.

Sam normally flies medical supplies for humanitarian organizations, but occasionally the company she works for - Airplanes without Borders - is hired by photographers and filmmakers who want to take aerial shots.  She had come to Agadez with some other pilots to fly for a crew of Japanese filmmakers who wanted to film the desert. 

When we met with her for dinner she made a point: "There is a plane here now - there are not many planes in Agadez. If you want to go up (in the air) now is your chance."

At 5:30 the next morning, Mike and I arrived at the single strip airport. I sat in one of the five seats (the other seven had been removed to make space for medical supplies.) Mike, however, sat on the floor in the back of the plane, held in by four inch-wide straps, and hung out of the plane to take pictures.

The thousand-foot view of the endless dunes of the Tenere Desert
on the way to camp from Agadez.

It was an unforgettable experience to see the Sahara from the air. Archaeological - as well as geological evidence - shows that over the last million years the Sahara alternated between wet and dry periods. Roman histories tell of crossing the Sahara by chariot as little as 2000 years ago. As windswept and sunbaked as the terrain is, the main topographical elements were carved by water.

 In my journal that morning I wrote:

"As we rise into the air, Agadez is a night sky of fluorescent stars. The back door of the plane is completely open and warm air rushes in. A deep wadi (dried-up riverbed) runs North/South outside the city.

What we experience on the ground as a series of bumps, rises, drops and sandy places in the air transforms into a story written by water. Trees grow in North-South bands. Even in the low light of daybreak, the Sahara is surprisingly green.

.The filez (the cliff) sends out small tentacles as we approach it from the East, then its massive self rises up off the plan. Crumbly, black, eroding rock gives way in ripples to sand. The sand undulates  at first in patches then in long waves.

.We are 500 feet above sea level - just 300 meters over the ground. Barely a thousand feet up. I can almost make out individual branches on acacia trees. Bright white flats that we relish driving on are clearly ancient, dried lakes. They seem to glow in the dawn.

.There is a tent of a Touareg nomad and small figures stand outside looking up, their hands to their eyes. A little distance away a curvy line is a camel, craning its neck at the sound of the plane."

Aerial view of camp shows 3 tents (bottom), plaster jacketed dinosaur bones (left), four Land Rovers (right) and guards' camp (top left, blue). There is only a small amount of water left in one of ourthree original storage balloons (lower right).

When we eventually reached camp (after a four hour drive) and showed them digital photos on Mike's camera, we verified the team's suspicions that the plane that had swept overhead during the breakfast meeting had carried their two delayed team members.

Mike leans out of the airplane to get a shot of camp.

The team, Peace Corp workers and various others watch
"Road Warriors" on Chris's computer.

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