Saturday, January 16, 2010

Sorry that it has been some time without a blog. Dad passed away and I made a trip home. After returning, getting a new visa and cleaning up from being gone, it was away again for Christmas. Anyway, I'm now back in Libya working. This last couple of days, we decided to visit a site on the western border where Libya, Tunisia and Algeria meet. It is a wonderful old town with much history named Ghadames. Toward the end of the day, we drove out to the dunes to watch the sun set. I am told that these are not as spectacular as the Sahara in the south, but it took my breath away.

This morning, we got up early as we had 5 different construction sites to visit as we drove back to Tripoli. One of our guys had been to an oasis near Ghadamas and on the way to our first site so we decided to take a quick side trip to explore. It was lovely being out in the middle of nowhere and seeing this beautiful pond bubbling up from the desert floor.

From the top of the oasis, we could see what appeared to be another oasis near by without any vegetation. We decided to explore it and as we drove along we thought that it had snowed. It was chilly out but not near freezing so we got out to investigate and found the desert floor covered with salt. In some places it looked just as if a dusting of snow had covered the area, in others the salt was in these polyps bursting up from the ground. We did find the other oasis but the amount of salt present explains why there was no vegetation.

I never cease to be amazed at what nature can show you.


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