Chad Adventure V. Elephant Arch and Camel Rides

In the Sahara, camels are wealth.  In Chad and other areas of northern Africa, for thousands of years they have been a means of transport and sustenance.  We were almost never out of sight of the beasts, and the opportunity to ride them across the desert, even for a short time, was something we couldn’t pass up.

Kelly’s thoughts…

Elephant Arch

On our third day in the Ennedi, in the morning, we traveled to see another wonder of land forms, Elephant Arch.  Driving through some of the most amazing canyons yet, we saw arches and holes galore.  Then we emerged to find the amazing Elephant Arch with its long trunk and small, elephant eye.  Set in an area of canyons and holes we explored all morning finding a deep slot canyon complete with a plunge pool with frogs.

 

Cram Cram

If our time in the Ennedi sounds difficult, but idealic, then we also need to describe one of the great banes of the Sahel… cram cram.  This annual grass, Cenchrus biflorus, has seeds in the form of spiny burrs that adhere to clothes, shoes, passing vehicles, etc.  These burrs are nearly as hard and spiny as goatheads, but the spines are barbed making them adhere even more vengefully.  These seeds stuck to everything we had and made their way into our tent at night where they stuck to our sleeping bags and liners and stabbed us during the night.  These seeds are demonic and highly concentrated evil.  It was our great fear that we would accidentally bring some back to New Mexico, which already has enough things trying to stab you.  How the animals of the Sahel have come to manage them is beyond me.

The Bottle

Along the way back to camp we stopped at a site called The Bottle, a spire that does look a bit like one.  Here we explored for a while and found more caves, pictographs, and, incredibly, pot shards.  Everywhere in the Ennedi are pieces of broken pottery, reminiscent of areas of the southwestern United States.  But the shards may be even more ancient… or they may be recent since people have been using pots in the area for hundreds of years.

Hyrax

We also found more rock hyrax in the area, and found a skull.  These little creatures are related to elephants, and their skull has two long fangs in the front and a series of elephant-like chewing teeth.  Super cool.

Fungi

Amazingly, in addition to other life in the region, I found an incredible fungus.  It was similar to a puffball with a bulb filled with brown spores, but had a scaly cap and a long, deeply rooted stem.  I posted it on a Facebook ID page and users there thought it could be Phellorinia herculeana. Pretty cool to find fungi in such a place as this.

Camels

In late afternoon, it was finally time for us to ride some camels.  These appeared along with two young boys who were in charge of making it happen.  The camels were saddled near camp.  Saddles are elaborate affairs that surround the hump of the animal, and the hump keeps it on, more or less.  There seems to be no need for a girth strap.  Blankets and padding are placed across the top and one sits literally on the hump like sitting on a chair.

The camel rises in herky-jerky fashion, and like getting into and out of a boat, this seems like the most dangerous moments.  Riki’s camel had a defective saddle and this caused… problems.  The tail strap failed and Riki went over the camel’s neck and down.

But she, and we, conquered the challenge and we were off for a lovely evening of camel ride.  More or less.  It turns out the defective saddle continued to cause problems.  Riki was on a bad saddle, but also on a bad camel.  Her’s required constant coaxing from one of the young boys and whipping with a stick to get it to go.  Soon,Riki and I did switch camels, and I learned that the saddle was also somewhat sloped forward.  This, combined with a large, centrally-placed wooden post, made the ride about as uncomfortable as possible.  The final straw was on the return trip where we lurched our way down a sandy slope, each lurch sending my crotch right into the previously-mentioned wooden post.  I had had it, and fortunately Yves swapped with me.  Riki and I rode rather pleasant saddles back to camp, and the indomitable Yves rode the defective camel and torturous saddle with ease, looking like a prince trotting along.

Manda Gueli

The trek on camels took us to an incredible site, Manda Gueli.  This beautiful cliff dwelling is two-storied and entered by way of a slot canyon.  Incredible pictographs lined the walls and windows looked out upon the valley.  Grinding stones suggested inhabitants worked with a view.  A lovely owl looked over the site.

We returned the same way, riding camels into the sunset. Our camel ride was a fantastic experience among a serious of amazing experiences, and one I will value forever.

Riki’s thoughts…

The day we went to Elephant Arch and the Bottle are kind of a blur to me. I was fighting illness (a cold, a UTI, and even infections in my piercings. It seems that the trip and all the new experiences caught up with me a bit. Luckily, we had Cipro along, prescribed by my travel nurse in case the traveller’s illness got me. That was one issue I was not facing yet.) There was some confusion about the camels we were supposed to ride. Evidently, the boys who oversaw bringing them to the camp had accidentally brought them to the site to which we were riding them, instead of our camp site. Yves told us that we would ride the camels in the afternoon, instead of in the morning as was originally planned.

I enjoyed Elephant arch, but could not keep up with Kelly, who wanted to explore a nearby canyon. As he took off to explore it, I found a cave with a south-facing entrance and scrambled up into it. It had some interesting pictographs, and the sun warmed the cage deliciously. I dangled my feet over the cliff ledge at the opening to the cave, which was 7 or 8 feet up, but that had some ledges that made getting into the cave pretty easy. When I got too warm sitting in the sun, I went over to Elephant Arch, and sat in a cave that was positioned under the elephant’s belly. It was shaded and cool, and I had grown a bit feverish, so the cold stone felt wonderful against my hot face and forehead. I think I may have even napped a bit. By the time Kelly got back from his exploration, I was feeling a bit better.

We took our traditional down time between noon and 3pm, and then it was time for our camel ride. It took me a minute to get over to the site where they were saddling the camels (I needed a pit stop). By the time I got over there, Kelly was already looking like he had ridden camels all his life. He was up on his camel, filming with his Go-Pro and snapping pictures with his camera. There were two young boys there, helping us, and Yves was there to help, as well.

Things started ok at first. I listened as Yves told me to keep forward on the hump of the camel, and taught me the sound I was supposed to make to get my camel to stand up, a sound I never even tried to make but just left it to the junior camel wranglers. I am not sure exactly what happened, but when the camel raised his back legs to get up from laying down to standing, I went from sitting forward on his hump, straddling the saddle, to laying in the sand with the saddle on top of me and one leg still stuck in the air between the saddle and the camel. The camel was making a strange sound, complaining about being only halfway up. I tried to assure everyone that I was ok, though I was only doing it for their comfort. I was not at all sure I was ok. The boys and Yves got the camel back down on the ground, took the saddle off me, and I jumped up and brushed the sand off my backside. They found a piece of twine and tied it around the saddle and the camel’s tail (which the camel vocally protested). Evidently, since the camel has a hump, the saddle does not need a girth, because it will just sit on the hump without it. But sometimes they tie a strap around the tail to keep the saddle from pitching forward when the camel is rising. My strap had broken on the ascent, and my form was probably wrong, which may have accounted for the fall.

As I realized the situation I faced, I knew that my choices were to either get back on or miss out on an adventure. I got back on after a bit of coaching from Yves, and this time we got all the way up and on our way. The saddle was defective, the camel was defective, but we were going nonetheless. The saddle was defective means in Riki Miller terms that it was extremely uncomfortable, with a big post that worked as a saddlehorn of sorts, but because of the hump, I was constantly forced to either shift back a bit or be incredibly uncomfortable. Yves announced that we would be gone for an hour or two, to which I softly requested closer to an hour. About 30 minutes into the ride, my camel, which needed constant prodding from one of the small boys, was dawdling pretty far behind Yves’ and Kelly’s camels. The boy ran up and said something to Yves, who announced, “Now, we will switch camels!” This meant that Kelly would get the defective camel, and I would get his. This situation lasted clear out to the site and over halfway back. But, when the terrain took a definite slope downward, the post became too much for Kelly. He asked Yves to switch camels, and Yves got the defective camel. He sat on the back side of the hump and found a higher gear for the camel, and Kelly and I finished out the ride on less miserable camels as the sun set over the Sahara.

The site to which we rode was amazing, a two-story cave riddled with cave paintings and side tunnels. It was a lovely site, and I only wish we could have stayed a bit longer. The boys enjoyed exploring it. It was a reward for two children who had walked the entire way to the site, tapping reluctant camels with branches to keep them moving. They also walked all the way back home. Along the way, the older boy told a story that made the younger child roar with laughter. I think he may have been retelling the story of my spill, but at least it was bringing them joy.

The children in Chad are very hardy, though they look somewhat scrawny. Many of the children spend all day out with the livestock. One boy I saw had a solar panel on his hip that he used to charge a cell phone he carried. Yves even mentioned that he was concerned that the children of this area were stuck in this lifestyle because they were working instead of attending the village school. He had evidently received an education and had gotten out of the Sahara to work in the city. He wanted the same opportunity for the children living where he had grown up.

Cram-cram. The bane of the Sahara, for sure. It grows on stalks, instead of on vines like the adjacent bane we have in our country, common goat heads. On short plants that look like harmless wheat grass, there are heads of stickers just waiting to grab clothes or to fall and travel along wherever passers-by go. It is awful, poky stuff. Each spur on the multi-spurred heads are barbed, so they do not simply pull out when they get embedded. I had some in my index finger throughout our time in Chad and Austria. They finally worked their way out when we got home. There are many evil-intentioned plants in our beloved New Mexico, but Cram-cram is worse than any we have here. We were extra careful to de-cram-cram our clothes and boots before leaving Chad, because we did not want to be responsible for bringing them to New Mexico.