Wednesday, March 26, 2008

The Sahara Desert

Aboard a camel, we approach the dunes of Erg Chebbi

The land around these huge sand dunes is flat as a pancake and bone dry. The palm trees appear to be engulfed by sand dunes. Likely the desert has encroached on them. This process is called desertification, a subject I plan to deal with in the next post.

Is this dragonfly alive or dead?

We were awakened (if we actually managed to sleep) to observe the sunrise over the Sahara. We got out of our warm bedding and climbed the dunes surrounding our camp. It is not warm in the desert at night. The dragonfly was likely just responding to the lower air temperature and would come to life once the sun rose, and warmed it up.

There is vegetation in the Sahara

If you, like me, assumed that the Sahara was only sand, it would come as a surprise to you to see that there are many clumps of grass to be seen.

Animal tracks

While waiting for the sun to rise I noted some tracks, but could not even imagine what animal might make them.

Shadows at sunrise

We were infatuated with the shadows and the lower the sun was, the longer the legs of our camels were! But it was difficult to take pics as camels do not give a smooth ride!

My daughter, and behind her, Lisa

This pic shows some of the vegetation on the dunes.

It was about 2 months ago that I was there. Sigh....it was such a great trip. I absolutely love reviewing my photos.

3 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Wow, what a great experience you had. I love that photo of the shadow of the camels -- great composition. I remember visiting the sand dunes in the southern US several years ago and seeing all the critters that slither through the dunes. We saw snake tracks but never did see one. ;)

Diane

8:10 a.m.  
Blogger Muriel said...

This comment has been removed by the author.

1:15 p.m.  
Blogger Muriel said...

I will pass along the compliment regarding the photo to my daughter, as she took the pic. I don't think that the composition was intentional, as you take what you can get when on top of a moving camel!

I guess those marks could be made by a snake, but were there then 2 snakes travelling together...?

1:16 p.m.  

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