the story of the tortoise

I really wanna share the story of a small desert inhabitant with hard crust but soft inside. Theses tortoises live up to 80 years and are capable of surviving without water for more than a year. This is possible due to their uberbladder, which retains liquid and makes it reaccessible for the tortoise's metabolism. Isn't that amazing? However, not everything in their life is as easy as it sounds like. Desert tortoises suffer from a mean enemy, know as man. Such one approaching a tortoise or even touching it, can terrify the latter in such a way, that it urinates, loosing too much liquid to survive until the next rain. Poor thing.

singing dunes

The desert - my associations went from dry, hot and sandy to completely dead. But what is a desert actually like? dry is right, as learned in school as the most important characteristic of a desert. Everything else is not really correct.
Mojave Desert Reserve is a huge stretch of land, we drove over 300 miles in and around it, not even having seen all the highlights. Landscapes change widely, from dry lake bassins to granite mountains and volcanic cinder cones. There are also the only singing dunes, which sometimes make a deep brumming sound as sand avalanches roll down the slopes setting sand particles in vibration. Hiking up a dune is hard, but it is beautiful (but dont forget, its also hard). Equipped with a thick layer of sunscreen, a shirt hat, sunglasses and WATER (2 liters per hour) we headed to the base of the dunes. Since my dear mum chose to enjoy the view from the bottom, I continued on my own, let alone with only the sun and the sand. It was steep, and sandy, thats what probably describes a dune best. As soon as reaching the edge, which forms a perfectly sharp line, there is great view over a huge, plaine bassin, surrounded by dark mountains in the far distance.