A Long Trip

I'm writing this up a week late. Last Sunday became a very long day, I was still tired after a 16 hour day on the Monday, going to Kerry and back, to look at quarry faces, and a 22 hour day Tuesday, going to London and back to get a visa. (at least I did manage to fit in a brief trip to Foyles bookshop, to top up on frighteningly expensive text books).

Add to the tiredness the sudden realization that I could not find my passport. It wasn't in the office or the house.

Forget any possibility of finishing off a report before going, it was panic time.

I eventually managed to contact Patty, (her work wants her to leave her phone switched off and well away from the working area. It's more a matter of obsessive compulsive disorder than anything else, and it makes it very difficult in emergencies like this). Sure enough, the passport was still in the pocket of the coat I'd put in her car when she picked me up on Wednesday night.

Monday morning was a 2:30am set off for Dublin airport and a 6 am flight for Amsterdam, got a window seat, but it was cloudy all the way.

I had an aisle seat in the 747 flight to Jo'burg. I asked if anyone wanted to swap, no one did, and the spotty youth in my row who said he preferred a window seat promptly pulled his blind down and kept it down for the rest of the flight. I was near a door, so used the window in it and became the target for the only middle aged hostess to jab me in the ribs when she came past for some imaginary infringement of her sense of order. All of the others were fine about me being there.

It was worth it, got a good view of the Dolomite Mountains, with the Venetian lagoon in the distance, a little of the Apennine hills and lots of Libya.

What came as a real surprise was flying over a couple of huge volcanic areas in the Sahara.

These had eroded cones and plugs of basalt and intrusions of either a yellow coloured intermediate rock type or else severe alteration in the core of the cones and some dykes.

Further south we passed an recent volcano with a large summit caldera containing 2 vents.

I had no idea that there were volcanoes in that general area so I've checked it out on Google maps (click the satellite box). It looks like the big areas of eroded basalt are in southern Libya and the best contender for the big volcano is in northern Chad. The arid climate, the two vents and the white deposits in the vent all match.

There is another Volcanic region in western Sudan, just east of where the border with Chad goes from straight to sinuous. One of the volcanoes there looks simillar, with two vents in a central caldera, but the climate appears to be much less arid than the volcano I saw.

I don't know what structures these centres are supposed to link up to, the area was very arid and, with very rough terrain, so it is probably little studied. There were also areas of particularly iron stained rock in the general area.

South from the Volcanoes and the river beds began to have bushes on them, gradually these spread out and thickened, and we were flying over granitic landscapes with thick bush eventually becomming thick rainforest with impressive cliffs of sedimentary rocks.

The cloud cover also thickened up and we had some impressive castellanus and Cb development.

The scumbags wanting to push my trolley or carry my bags were surprisingly thin on the ground at the airport, perhaps the cold (14 c) had sent them into hibernation.

The cool and early darkness at Johannesburg were a shock after the longest day in Ireland, and a shower and bed at the hotel were a welcome releif at 9pm Irish time.