Chad Adventure VI. The Zipper and Guelta d’Archei

Our last day in Ennedi brought us another collection of amazing sights, The Zipper, Mushroom Rock and, late in the day, the beautiful Guelta d’Archei oasis, among other things.  As we spent our last day, it became clear to us that we will one day need to be back, to see things we had already found, but also to see more.  We had the sense we had only begun to experience the vast wonders of the Ennedi Plateau.

Kelly’s thoughts…

Mask Rock

We arose in the morning with plans for more exploring, our last day in this magnificent region.  We drove out through a new area for us with absolutely fantastic spires and arches and vistas.  We stopped at an area where we explored along a giant monument characterized by massive, amazing spires.  There were small caves along the base with more pictographs and pot shards were here and there.  Across the valley was an impressive structure with two arches like eyes, Mask Rock. Unfortunately, Riki was feeling ill by this point, but she was an amazing trooper, continuing to enjoy the area and finding things to experience.  After over a week without a shower, sleeping in a tent and dealing with poor food, sand and cram cram, she was truly an amazing woman the entire trip, putting up with so much with real enthusiasm.

Mushroom Rock and The Zipper

A bit farther along the way we encountered an amazing, giant balanced rock in the shape of a mushroom along with another huge balanced rock nearby.  This area felt more like home with hoodoos and balanced rocks like the Bisti in New Mexico, or parts of southern Utah.  The view was stunning with another giant structure in the distance called The Zipper, a series of giant stones lined up like the teeth of a zipper or a comb.  We drove over near The Zipper, one of my favorite structures we had seen.

 We wound our way back, stopping occasionally to see the amazing landscapes.  We were becoming accustomed to the absurd shapes and dramatic structures of this amazing place, but even so, around every corner was a new phenomenon to see and experience.

We took advantage of the day to explore some more around camp finding additional pictographs in caves and lamenting that our all-to short time in the Ennedi was coming to an end.  We agreed that further exploration would be required some time in the future.

Guelta d’Archei

Our evening was spent at the Guelta d’Archei, an incredible oasis in a deep canyon where, again, local herders bring their livestock to drink and get water for home use.  It’s one of the better-known gueltas in all of the Sahara, known in large part because of its beautiful setting and importance to local peoples.  In the evening there were very few people there, mostly they come in the morning.  The lake in the canyon is deep and still and extends around the bend from wall to wall.

Also unique to Guelta d’Archei is the presence of a population of west African crocodiles (Crocodylus suchus).  This species occurs mainly through west central Africa with this small, incredibly isolated population at Archei numbering only about 6 individuals.  This is the last known population from the region.  They are very shy, and luckily we saw one slide into the water from where it was sunning itself on the sandy bank.  It didn’t emerge again, but it was an amazing glimpse of a truly rare critter.

With that we returned late to camp and enjoyed our last evening with a smoke and our last look at the sunset over the Ennedi.  We will be back.

Riki’s thoughts…

Of all the places we visited in the Ennedi, the Comb and the surrounding area reminded me most of home in New Mexico. I think this was mostly because of the balanced rocks we found. The area, except for the flora and maybe the size of the formations, looked a lot like some of the areas we have visited on our explorations of New Mexico. We had plenty of time in the area to explore the formations, and I thoroughly enjoyed scrambling up and around them. I was again impressed with Kelly’s natural goat-like agility as we explored. I enjoyed collecting rocks and following Kelly as he led us on a tour of the basin. Beyond the basin was the impressive Comb formation (also called the Zipper). We were headed that direction, when Yves met us with the vehicle, and drove us close enough to photograph it but not close enough to explore it. We saw evidence of recent activity in the area, making us wonder if people travel through there regularly as part of a longer route between locales.

The trip out to the other oasis took us across some lovely country that evidently floods during the rainy season. Part of the route was through deep sand that Yves did not enjoy driving through. There was a forest of a strange sort of plant that we also found surrounding the villages. Yves said that the only use for it was for stomach ailments. It was obviously something neither the livestock nor the people had interest in, because it took over like six-foot-high weed trees. It had big, thick gray-green leaves and an ample stalk. It reminded me of an overgrown milkweed plant. It made me wonder if there would be giant monarch caterpillars climbing on it. When I mentioned the similarity to Kelly, we broke open a leaf and saw a milky substance not unlike our milkweed plant. Kelly tells me it is possibly Calotropis procera, or Sodom’s apple. His research said that it is found in many places around the world, but in Chad, the silky material in the pods is sometimes used as padding in Camel saddles.

As a part of my classes at WGU studying elementary and special education, I have been introduced to a few different popular philosophies of education. One, developed by Jean Piaget, is called constructivism. It in a nutshell says that we learn new things by comparing them to things we already know. The way I have come to understand it is that we have file folders in our brain, and when we learn something new, we try to figure out what folder to file the new information in. Most of what I saw and experienced in this trip forced my brain to create a new file folder. But it was a bit soothing to find a place and a plant that was similar to something I had already seen and experienced. After so many new things, a bit of familiar was lovely.

I sat quite a while with Yves and his friend (the camp overseer), hoping that the crocodiles would re-appear after our glimpse of one slipping into the water. Watching the two of them hoping for one more sighting got me thinking. There are six crocodiles still in the area, descendants of crocs that have been there for centuries, millenia. This oasis is one that provides water to the people and livestock in the area. They seem to love the fact that the crocodiles are there, a sort of local novelty. I was thinking that there may be some people in the first world that would love to make a project of building the crocodile presence in the area. When we first arrived, there was a woman at the oasis. She had her three children and a few burros with her. She was filling containers with water and loading them on the burros. I wondered how she would like efforts to increase the local crocodile population. It made me realize that things are never as simple as we would like to believe. A crocodile conservation project that seems so worthwhile in our country may not seem like nearly as good of an idea if those crocodiles are to live where you must get your family’s water. As Kelly so often reminds me, “It’s . . . complicated.”