We have crossed the Tenere and Erg du Bilma last é weeks and it was interesting. Want to share some of our gained knowledge. First we have managed to get from Agadez to Dirkou without the obligatory guide. We convinced the chief of police in Agadez that one of us(we were with 2 cars/4 persons) was a guide, which was true but only for rivercruises in Europe :-))) They bought it!!! In Dirkou people were very nice and we stayed at the Mayors (Bou Bakar) house. In Bilma we tried to find a guide and we had the choise of 2 guys. One was very expensive (190000 CFA) but seemed competent. He also had a drivers licence and a car. For 190K CFA he would have to be in our car though. The other guide was 130K CFA so we took him but as we got on our way we noticed that he had no kwowledge of what a car can do in the sand. He had crossed the desert many times but only on his camel. He was basically useless and after Zoo Baba he wanted to send us into a virtually impossible dune field. Not the nicely distibuted rows with wide corridors but short dunes, one after the other, as far as the eye could see with no corridors at all. We decided to ignore his directions and revert back to what we had: our GPS and the Russian Staff Maps! We had to drive a long way from where we were to get back on the russian route but soon enough we were very happy with our decision as one easy passage appeared after the other. Althoug the russian maps are old they are still very very usefull to get through the Grand Erg du Bilma, particularly the leg after Zoo Baba! So ODE TO THE RUSSIAN STAFF MAPS. In hind sight I can say that the Erg du Bilma is not all that difficult if you know the route. There are many places where the dunes can be crossed easily and without any danger but you have to know how to find them! The biggest problem were not the dunes but the corridors between the dunes which in places were so soft that we had to dig our way throug!

Moral of the story for anybody with the same plans; do not try to be cheap on a guide ! You will get what you pay for.

Cheers from N'Dlamena

Noel
www.exploreafrica.web-log.nl