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| During my last UN-mission I took the opportunity to plan a collecting trip together with Alex (Carabidae, especially Scaritinae) and Wolfi (Buprestidae) through Syria. Unfortunately the success of a collecting trip depends very much on the weather, especially in the Middle East, where temperatures in March can rise well above 30°C and on the other hand can drop below 10°C months later (June) in the deserts and mountains. In our case, we were just a bit late for the desert and well too early for the mountains. Nevertheless, it was a great excursion, resulting in new species (Dostal). Our excursion was guided by Mr. Mamdoh Al-Hosari, a professional tourguide in Syria. |
| Palmyra Arriving in Palmyra, Mamdoh, our driver, couldn't understand why we didn't want to see all the beautiful stones ... of course they were beautiful, but our excursion was not for an archeological purpose. Therefore we had a short look at the nice panorama of Palmyra, said 'ahhhhh' and 'ohhhhh' and disappeared in the desert at the edge of a dry salt lake for our first night collecting session. Due to strong wind after the moon rised (22:00), we didn't collect very exciting material. |
| Wolfgang Barries, Dr. Alexander Dostal & Rüdiger Preiss in front of the French Bridge over the Euphrates River at Deir Ez-Zor. |
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| EXCURSION TO SYRIA 2002 27 April - 11 May with Dr. Alexander Dostal & Wolfgang Barries |
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| I love the desert where I can focus on the simple things in life. |
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| Mr. Al-Hosari was very reliable and with his minibus drove us almost everywhere, although in certain occasions we missed a proper 4x4 vehicle. On the other hand the minibus provided a lot of space and was very reasonable, including the driver. You can contact Mr. Al-Hosari at: +963-11-6322669 (home) +963-93-280289 (mobile) |
| P.O. Box 1908, Damascus |
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| Julodis syriaca palmirensis |
| A desert flower |
| Starting in Damascus, we headed towards Palmyra (East), into the desert. At our first stop we found this wonderful Palmyran Jewel Beetles (Julodis syriaca palmyrensis). Most of them were already dead & dry in the sand, what made us to realise that we were already late in the season. |
| Deir Ez-Zor & Euphrates After another stormy night at the dry salt lake of Palmyra, we headed further East towards Deir Ez-Zor at the Euphrates River. At the small village 'Bseir' or 'Buseirah', where the Khabour River meets the Euphrates, I found my first interesting Elateridae specimens. We decided to stay there over night and this time we had a lot of insects at our lights. Further North we stopped at a side stream of the Khabour River, another interesting site ... |
| ... well, in this case he helped to search for 'our' material - with an increased cigarrette consumption and some old Viennese expressions of displeasure ... "heast, oida, do is jo gor nix, a so a Sch...." :) |
| Right: A toad-headed Agama. After hunting him for a few miles, he gave up and I finally could take a photo ... I hope that I didn't upset him too much, although I have to mention that he was not very friendly ... a biting Agama is no fun at all! |
| Alex trying our flower-traps, which are small coloured cups (one yellow and one red dot in the grass beside him. Insects should confuse them with flowers and get trapped inside ... our success was limited. It works better earlier in springtime, when the vegetation is not dry yet. |
| Jabal Aziz After a short stop in Hessekeh, not a very pleasant town, which was quite dirty and we had troubles to find an acceptable accomodation for a reasonable price, we drove to the 'Jabal Aziz', where Wolfgang expected some interesting Buprestidae, collected by Czech colleagues before. The weather was not warm and accordingly poor were our results, especially at night. |
| some fascinating landscapes, caught a few Buprestidae for Wolfgang and also met a colourful spider. Wolfgang tried to get some information from local people and had to show them his nice Julodis collection. |
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| A colourful spider - I hope that somebody can tell me what it is? |
| Since Wolfgang was in a bad mood after he didn't find what he expected, I took the initiative and went by foot on top of the mountain range. On the way there I passed |
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| Houte Somewhere after Raqqa, half way to Aleppo, we followed a hint from my good friend, Walid, who is a passionate bird hunter (at least he eats them after hunting ... ). Years before he told me about a mysteric huge hole into the ground, in the middle of the desert, where rock pigeons circled up beside the walls. This suggested that there could be an underground river, causing a vortex. I took my climbing gear to discover the place ... and it was indeed quite impressive - a huge hole, just like a devil's gate to the middle of the earth ... With a drilling machine organised in Hessekeh, I mounted a hook at the edge of the hole from which I repelled into the 30m deeper mouth ... There was no river, but an underground lake and where the mouth ended, gravel and debris formed a large cornice with thousands of insects, which didn't find their way out anymore. A huge trap :)! |
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| The 'Houte', like a devil's throat. From the very top to the bottom it is approx. 70 meters deep. |
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| Bee-hut villages After Aleppo I was a bit handicapped due to a huge thorn from a Rhobinia, which pierced my hand. But the beauty of these Bee-hut villages let me forget the pain. |
| A billion people sitting watching their TV in the room they call living but as for me I see living as loving and since there is no loving room I sit on the grass under a tree dreaming of the way things used to be. ... This was Pre-us back when the buffalo roamed and the Indian's home was forest, and God was nature and heaven was here and now Can you imagine clean water, food, air living in community with animals and people who care? |
| Woody Harrelson |
| The salt lake near Aleppo was filled with water after thunderstorms a few days before, attracting hundreds of flamingos. We got a special permission by the commander of a Military 'Camp' to collect on a very well preserved peninsula. Of course we had to drink a few sessions of tea with him first :). Unfortunately our time was limited, but we got some interesting specimens. |
| The river 'Al Khabir Jamaly' was the last station for my photo-session ... I dropped my new digital camera into the water when I tried to cross the river and underestimated the stream ... But after keeping my camera in Silica for 2 weeks, it worked again :). |