Hidden Unseen: 2015-04-05

The Friendly Crocodiles in Paga

Crocodiles are generally aggressive, but not in the town of Paga. This small town in northern Ghana, nestled right up against the border of Burkina Faso, is home to some of the most docile members of this fearful predator species. They live in the Paga Crocodile Pond, about forty-four kilometers from Bolgatanga, the regional capital, where they swim merrily along side young children while their mothers wash clothes on the banks. No one has ever been harmed by any of the crocodiles. The crocodiles are equally respected by the villagers who believe that the soul of every native of the village is carried by these animals. They claim that whenever any important personality in the village dies, it is followed by the death of one of the sacred crocodiles.

According to the local folklore, a long ago a hunter was trapped between a pond and a pursuing lion. He made a bargain with a crocodile in the pond that he and his decedents would never eat crocodiles if the crocodile helped him cross the pond and escape from the lion. The crocodile agreed and helped the hunter to cross the pond. The hunter built a house there and established a village.

An alternate story tells us about an individual named Nave, who left his home in Leo in Burkina Faso, and came wandering into the country. He lost his way and while searching for water met a crocodile which led him to watering hole. It was then he decided that that spot was where he was going to settle and founded Paga. He therefore decreed that none of his descendants should ever eat a crocodile.

Nobody really knows how the crocodiles ended up in Paga. The pond is completely landlocked and some of the oldest beasts in the water are reportedly over 80 years old.

There are actually two crocodile ponds in Paga. The first one which is located on the highway 12 km from Navrango is called as the Chief Pond and the other is the Zenga Crocodile Pond, five minutes drive off the main road to the Paga border. Guides at the ponds use live chicken, paid by the tourists, to lure the crocodiles out of the water and into land where tourists can pet them or take pictures with them. Sometimes children and even adults would sit on the back of the crocodiles and have their pictures taken.

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Lauterbrunnen - The Valley of 72 Waterfalls

Tucked away in the Bernese Oberland of the Swiss Alps, about 70km southeast of Bern, lies the valley of Lauterbrunnen, regarded as one of the most beautiful valleys in Europe. The valley is about a kilometer in width, and lies between gigantic rock faces and mountain peaks that rises almost perpendicularly to heights of 300 meters from the floor of the valley. At the bottom, nestled between towering limestone precipices, lies the village of Lauterbrunnen, surrounded on three sides by the Eiger, Monch and Jungfrau Mountains. The valley, carved by receding glaciers, extends south and then turns south-westwards from the village to form a U shape.

Lauterbrunnen means “many springs”. The name is derived from the 72 waterfalls that gush down into the valley from the vertical cliff faces, some of which are several hundred meters high. The most famous of these are the Staubbach Falls that plunges almost 300 meters, making it one of the highest in Europe formed of a single unbroken fall.

Another spectacular natural phenomenon are the Trümmelbach Falls hidden behind a mountain, and consisting of a series of ten glacier-fed waterfalls that carries 20,000 litres of water per second. It drops a total of 200 meters. These thunderous falls have carved corkscrew-shaped gorges inside the limestone mountain. The waterfalls were invisible until 1877, when a tunnel was chiseled into the mountain. Today, you can ride an underground funicular and hike the walkways to see it. In winter, however, the falls are reduced to a trickle.

Lauterbrunnen’s dramatic cliffs and falls have inspired many musicians and writers, such as Johann Goethe’s poem, “Song of the Spirit of the Waterfalls,” which Franz Schubert set to music. J.R.R. Tolkien’s Misty Mountains of “The Hobbit” is also based on Lauterbrunnen.

Lauterbrunnen became a UNESCO World Natural Heritage Site in 2001.

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The Ubari Sand Sea Lakes

The Ubari Sand Sea is a vast area of towering sand dunes in the Fezzan region of south-western Libya. But 200,000 years ago, this was a wet and fertile region with plenty of rainfall and flowing rivers. These rivers fed a vast lake, the size of Czech Republic, in the Fezzan basin called Lake Megafezzan. During humid periods the lake reached a maximum size of 120,000 square kilometers. Climate change caused the region, a part of Sahara, to gradually dry up and between 3,000 to 5,000 years ago, the lake evaporated away into thin air. Traces of this great lake still exist today in the form of micro lakes scattered among the towering dunes like wet patches in the desert. Currently there are about 20 lakes in the Ubari Sand Sea - beautiful palm-fringed oases that appear like anomalies in the harsh desert environment.

Oum al-Maa Lake, Ubari Sand Sea.

Among the most picturesque of the lakes are Gaberoun and Umm al-Maa (the Mother of Water). Located besides the ruins of the old village, Gaberoun is the one tourists mostly visit. There is a rudimentary tourist camp on the shore, including an open patio, sleeping huts, and a souvenir shop. There are two more beautiful lakes - Umm al-H'isan (the Mother of the Horse), also spelt as Oum El Hassan, located north of Gaberoun; and another one at Tarhouna, about 11km from Umm al-H'isan. These are, however, rarely visited by tourists.

The Ubari lakes are very salty. This is due to the fact that these lakes are being continuously evaporated and have no rivers replenishing them (Libya has no perennial rivers that persist year-round). This has caused the dissolved minerals in the lake waters to become concentrated. Some of these lakes are nearly five times saltier than seawater. Some take on blood-red hue from the presence of salt-tolerant algae.

Although the Ubari Lakes are not exactly shallow, ranging from 7 to 32 meters in depth, they are at the risk of drying out. The waters in Sahara’s underground aquifers, that were deposited tens of thousands of years ago in much wetter times, is limited and this is already declining thanks to the increasing use of aquifer water by growing human populations. About three decades ago the Libyan government undertook an ambitious project called Great Man-Made River, aimed at drawing water from the aquifers beneath the Fezzan region via a network of underground pipes to make the desert bloom. The project, if successful, will drain these enormous reserve of fresh water in just 50 to 100 years.

Oum al-Maa Lake.

Mandara lake, Libya.

Gaberoun Lake.

Gaberoun Lake

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