The first mosque was built on this site in the 13th century, but was later demolished, so the current structure dates from 1907. It was built using bricks of sun-baked mud, with mud for mortar, and is coated in a plaster mix which is basically just mud.

Using nothing but mud-derivatives doesn’t make for a very sound structure, so the building requires frequent repairs. To aid this process bundles of palm branches have been added into the walls to support the structure and act as a sort of scaffolding climbing wall for the repair work.

More info about the Great Mosque at Wikipedia and pictures on Flickr.

Thanks to Sven van Heel.

Locations: Mali / Categories: Buildings, Towers

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Let’s start with the basics: many of the animals we can see in Africa are of course working animals, like this large flock of sheep, these forlorn looking donkeys, and an absolute plethora of cows, goats, camels, and people filling up at a well.

We can do much better than this though – out in the wild, things start to get a lot more exciting.

Firstly we can see a small group of Gazelles caught mid-leap in the desert of Chad, and there’s obviously been a few passing this way – look how many hoof-prints they’ve left in the sand! Also caught leaping (but through a river), are a large group of Red Lechewe in Zambia.

Again in Chad, but out on the savannah this time, we find this wonderful image of a small family of Elephants huddling together to protect their young. Presumably from the terrifying machine flying overhead…

Out on the plain in Mozambique we can see a portion of what must have been a fairly enormous herd of Buffalo, again presumably fleeing from the plane above them.

Thanks to the exceptional resolution of these images, the animals don’t have to be as big as the 1.7 metre high African Buffalo to be spotted. In a swamp in Mali, there’s a great image of a Giant Stork flapping lazily around. Just to the south there’s actually one perched in a mangrove, and lots of other birds have been caught on the wing elsewhere in Mali.

Not all the birds found are own their own though – on the coast of Mozambique there’s a stunning image of a huge flock of Pink Flamingos taking off (perhaps they were startled by this small boat to the north?).

To Zambia now, where we can see some lovely chubby little baby hippos and even better, in Tanzania we can see a pod of hundreds of hippos wallowing in the mud, which is a truly incredible sight.

Here’s another shot of the same hippos in the mud¹, but this time we can more clearly see that’s there’s actually a dead hippo lying on the bank, being feasted on by vultures.

Hippos tend to share their pools and rivers with other creatures – particularly crocodiles, and nearby to yet another pod of hippos we can see the unmistakable silhouette of a crocodile just under the water. Next to the first hippos we found, there’s another crocodile, just chilling out on the bank.

Finally, although not being the kind of animals you’d traditionally expect to see while on safari, these images of seals on the coast of Namibia are too good not to include!

And here ends the great Google Sightseeing Safari. Of course this is only the beginning as there are more than 500 Megaflyover images to explore in Google Earth! Reggie98 at the Keyhole foums has been categorizing all of the animals to be found in them.

To see all the Megaflyover images, open “Gallery” in the Layers sub-panel (bottom-left) and enable the National Geographic Layer. You’ll see little red aircraft symbols appearing all over Africa, and each of these will take you to a hi-res shot of the area. Also, here’s a link to download a kml file which details many of the hundreds of undocumented images that form part of this enormous and stunning collection.

Thanks to all of the people at the Keyhole forums who helped me find these fascinating images! For more background on the project, visit the official Megaflyover and National Geographic pages.

Locations: Africa, Chad, Mali, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, United Republic of Tanzania, Zambia / Categories: Animals, Deserts

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Yes, it looks a lot like this man is answering nature’s call on a lonely path, here in Mali, Africa.

While we’re going to remain on the fence for at least a while, we hope you lot are ready to weigh in on this one!

Thanks to Anonymous

Locations: Mali / Categories: Crowds

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Useless semi-related Wikipedia facts for the day:

The term ‘cattle’ isn’t a plural, but a mass noun, so you can refer to “some cattle”, but not “three cattle”. Rarely for the modern English language, there is no singular equivalent to “cattle” other than the various gender and age-specific terms – i.e. “a cow” actually only refers to an adult female who has had more than two calves.

Which explains why “the skull of an ex-cattle” didn’t sound right…

Thanks to Felippo and googleearthhacks.

Locations: Mali / Categories: Animals, Deserts

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