(continued from Discovery Stories main page)

A ROCKY START
We arrived in Niger on August 14, 2000. Only four of our fourteen pieces of luggage arrived with us in Niamey, the capital of the Republic of Niger. Over the next two weeks the bags came trickling in - having taken a more adventurous route than the Chicago-Paris-Niamey route taken by the team - some arrived via Casablanca, Morocco, another via Abijan, Cote d'Ivoire. Unfortunately two never showed up at all.

Our support crew was able to replace some of the lost equipment when they arrived two weeks later, but, as we quickly learned once we were in Niger, the bags lost by the airline were a fraction of our missing equipment.

The two cargo containers carrying the bulk of our expedition supplies, sent by boat across the Atlantic Ocean in early July, still had not arrived in Niger. The cargo company missed a transfer in Europe and when the containers arrived in Cotonou, Benin, the two 18-wheelers scheduled to drive them 2000 miles north to Niamey were not ready.

The 5-foot-long massive jaws of an enormous 110 million year old crocodile.

One of the trucks broke down on the way; the other came to a halt 100 miles from the border with Niger after it ran out of gas during a gas shortage that left Benin dry. Both trucks arrived at the Niger border, they sat in customs for a week, paralyzed by a truckers' strike that disabled any possibility of having the goods driven in Niger.

The time we had built into the expedition schedule as a buffer evaporated. With four field camps planned over three months, we were on the verge of experiencing a crippling delay before we even reached the field. I had to make a new plan.

Three trucks crossing the 130 million year old
Filez on the way to Gadafawa.

At the end of the 1997 Expedition to Niger we had put basic supplies for a small team in storage in Agadez, our base of operations. We put these "leftovers" to work and the team - most of us without sleeping bags - headed for the field to launch the expedition.

In planning an expedition in the Sahara, the most critical supply is water. Water is heavy and difficult to deploy 100 miles into the desert. Our original plan: hire a truck to haul 4000 gallons into the field and store it in huge water balloons. Unfortunately the balloons were in cargo.

The water truck finally arrives, the water reservoirs are laid out in the sand
and the team waits to start filling them.

As we acclimated to the125 degree heat, we watched our dwindling supply of water carefully. Ironically, after cargo arrived and the water-balloons were in place in the field, the water truck broke down on the way to our desert campsite, leaving us critically short of water and requiring us to return to Agadez on two "water runs."

Team member Dave Blackburn runs a head of Land Rover to throw a sand ladder in front of it so it does not get stuck again. Chris is driver; Paul looks on as Nat Geo films it for upcoming video It took over an hour to get this going. He is also towing a Land Rover with a dead starter behind him

The water truck finally arrived 10 days late - but not before a new motor was driven to the stranded vehicle and installed in the middle of the desert - You can imagine our frustration when we found the water was red and metallic-tasting from rust in the tank. Time to put the water filters pumps to use!