Simpson Desert Crossing via The Hay River Track
It was early July, primetime for outback travel in Australia. I was meeting up with a man who I had never met, taking his Land Rover and driving it nearly 3000km across five of Australia’s eight states from Melbourne, across the Simpson Desert to Alice Springs for him. Sounds odd doesn’t it?
Photo of The Week: Pelicans in Flight, Senegal 2011
Mapping the National Parks in Senegal for MAPA was great fun. As the parks were all wetland we got to leave the confines of the Land Cruiser and head out on a boat or Pirogue for the day.
This Photo was taken at Oiseaux de Djoudj National Park in the north of Senegal on the Mauritania border. It is one of the most important wetland reserves as its the 1st freshwater source for migrating European birds. After crossing the Mediterranean and Sahara approximately three million migratory birds are supported here.
Alongside Nazinga in Burkina Faso this was one of the more memorable parks in terms of wildlife.
Photo of The Week: West Africa, Mali 2011
This week’s photo is from a very remote village in Mali. We were here to help The MAPA project map and record information on all National Parks and reserve areas in Mali, Burkina Faso and Senegal. Maps show little to no roads in these parks and those on paper maps have been lifted from old IGN maps dating back to the 50’s.
This village in particular is north of Mora Mora in the de Boule NP. Villages here do not have motorised transport so when our Land Cruiser pushed through the bush the whole village came out to meet us. With mud huts so close together, the villagers moved their firewood aside and congregated on the edge of the village to see us off. I took this photo from the roof of the Cruiser. The curious look from the children is due to them never seeing a camera before.
For me this is the most poinient photo of our expedition through West Africa.
Our GPS tracks for the area can be found on Tracks4Africa
Lisa
Griff
Sirocco Overland | Сирокко Оверленд 