Guelb er Richât

The Guelb er Richât or Richat Structure is also known as the Eye of Africa. It is a circular geological structure some 40 km in diameter. Realistically it is only properly visible from space. However, it is still an interesting and remote desert location to visit. Also, because it is so obvious on a map, it makes a good place to point at when you want to talk about where you have travelled. Nominally, this was the purpose of the trip. Of course, like any trip, it is really about the journey and not the destination. From Atar the map showed a track to the village of Ouadane. From there we would need to find our own way.

The road between Atar and Ouadane is heavily corrugated. Little ridges across the road form on some types of unsurfaced track because of a particular combination of the type of sand or gravel and the way tyres and suspension work. Driving on a washboard surface can be a killer. We tried two strategies. The first, young man’s approach is to let a bit of air out of the tyres and then drive fast. The softer tyres provide a bit of cushioning and if you get the speed just right the vehicle will kind of float over the ridges. However, this is a high-risk approach. On occasions, you will hit a bump too fast and possibly launch into the air sending everything and everyone in the vehicle flying. Ultimately, you run the risk of damaging the vehicle or even losing control of it. The safer, old man’s technique that we adopted is to slow right down. Then you can let much more air out of the tyres to make them very soft. Soft tyres heat up quickly so you need to keep the speed down. Life is slower and less exciting but much more predictable. Top speed is maybe 30 kph so patience is required. The trip took us two days in each direction. We camped a few hundreds of metres off the side of the track in the open desert. There is very little traffic on this track. A handful of cars, mostly Toyota pickup trucks, during the day and nothing at night.

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We left the village of Ouadane heading north. This is not the quickest way to the Guelb er Richât but we were pleased to be out of Ouadane. This was another village of tight packed buildings and low slung electricity cables. By the time we extricated ourselves we had attracted a crowd of about 20 people, mostly children. Fortunately, one man had the sense to show us a way out rather than just asking for gifts. We gave him a few ouguiya (the local currency) for his trouble and set off across the ubiquitous ‘just outside a town’ rubbish dump. The route north was very rocky. Nasty sharp stones that made me fear for our tyres. So, we were slow. Very slow and very careful. Eventually we reached the edge of the mesa and could see beyond the hills that form the outer edge of the Richat structure. A strong wind was making visibility poor. The wind picks up the sand and dust obscuring the distance like a misty day. We could only see a few kilometres and there was no sense of the structure at all. However, even on a clear day, it is not possibly to see the circular formation. From the plateau edge we could descend via a series of dunes into a sand filled valley. Then we were picking our way across more rocks and then we were out onto a wide-open, flat, smooth plain.

Following a combination of vehicle tracks on the ground and odd tracks marked on the map, we eventually picked up the main route into the centre of the structure. For mapping, we have a couple of paper maps and some digital maps. The paper maps are good for understanding the overall context of the route but nowhere near detailed enough to show tracks. The digital maps are all derived from the OSM (Open Street Map) project. These have proven to be remarkably detailed and accurate for Morocco and Mauritania. We use one set on the Garmin Dezl sat nav. This sits on the dashboard and is used for most day-to-day navigation in Baloo. Another set is used with the OsmAndMaps App that runs on an iPad. When Baloo was first delivered, the sat nav would barely work at all. This is because the windscreen has small heating wires embedded in it. Very useful for removing ice when we travel in the Arctic but, in combination with the sheet metal roof rack, very effective at blocking GPS signals. Unicat installed an external GPS receiver with a relay inside the cab. This is very effective and always gives us a good fix (low dilution of precision) on the sat nav and the iPad. It also ensures they tell a consistent story and never show different locations.

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The route crossed several areas that, if seen from high enough, make the circular shape. We crossed the plain, climbed over some shallow hills and then drove out onto a small chott. Then some more hills and finally a winding track to the very centre of the Guelb er Richât. There were a couple of unused simple buildings there. We could not really see anything of the greater structure even when I clambered up a small hill. None the less, for one night, we were the mote in the Eye of Africa. It was very satisfying and made a great purpose to our trip.

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