Tag:Libya
This wadi had obviously seen some reliable moister over the years judging by the palm tree. There’s also some scrubby bushes around. The surface also looks ‘caked’ rather than sandy or gravelly.
Order a print of this photo The movie cliché holds that a soldier’s rifle is his best friend. For most of 1985, this Land Rover was my ‘rifle’. It held 80 gallons gas in two tanks, 20 gallons of water and a survival kit with nutrient rich emergency rations. It also had a VHF radio. The standing rule was to ‘stay with your vehicle’ at all times – it being much easier to see a vehicle in this vast emptiness […]
The traditional definition of a desert is based on a (lack of) rainfall figure – less than 250 mm (10 in.) rainfall per year. An alternative definition is a place that lacks sufficient vegetation to support human population. the English word desert comes from the Latin ‘desertum’ meaning an abandoned place.
From a distance, the salt flats at Badwater Basin in Death Valley look quite, well, flat. Indeed, if you visit Badwater and walk out onto the salt, the initial stretch where everyone walks is indeed flat. But off the beaten path, the flats are quite rough. The salt flats are made up of masses of polygonal structures of varying size. These are formed by expansion of the salt mud as the water evaporates and the salt crystals grow. The park […]
So, after several weeks and several false starts my first book is now available! You can preview and order it below. The ‘Lady Be Good’ by Richard Davis | Make Your Own Book I decided to use the Lady Be Good as my first book as I still find this to be a compelling story all these years later. In short, in 1943 a B-24D Liberator bomber took off on it’s first mission of the war and never returned. No […]
When I first went to Libya in 1984 I was an ‘Assistant Seismologist’. My job function was to determine the static corrections needed to apply to the seismic data so it all made sense in the processing cycle. To do this we had a couple of Mayhew 1000 drilling rigs mounted on Belgian MOL trucks. They’d go out to the location we directed and drill typically a 10 cm diameter hole to a depth of up to 100 meters. I’d […]
