rabbit holes, crashed planes, and the Sahara
I’m not sure where I found it, but in the morning’s web-wandering I came across Dietmar Eckell‘s project “Happy End“, a series of photos of the wrecks left behind after remote airplane crashes in which all aboard survived. It doesn’t appear to be in the book, but he took this really striking photo of an Avro Shackleton which came down somewhere out in Western Sahara. I want a print of this picture for my house.
I looked up the crash and found out that it was a former South African Air Force plane which crashed only twenty years ago, in 1994. It’s located way out in Western Sahara, near the Mauritanian border. Some people on an overlanding board got to discussing what an expedition out there would involve, and it really sounds kind of amazing. Someone who goes by “Florence of Arabia” actually tried it.
It’s funny, I was just looking up flights to Nouakchott last week; it’s about two grand for a round trip.
Neat photo. However, reading that 1994 was 20 years ago really tripped me out. I’m feeling old all of a sudden.
Comment by Rachel — February 15, 2014 @ 5:13 pm
Yeah, I hear you. The plane looks so weatherbeaten that it seems like it must have crashed a long time ago – and I guess it did, but it’s weird that 1994 now counts as “a long time ago”.
Comment by Mars Saxman — February 17, 2014 @ 9:29 pm