Ben Amera
Interesting facts
- According to local belief, Ben Amera would outsize even Uluru if the part of the rock buried beneath the sand were counted.
- Some rankings place Ben Amera third among the world's monoliths, behind Australia's Uluru and Mount Augustus.
- Its companion Ben Aïcha rises about 450 metres and also carries climbing routes on its granite slabs.
- The artists who gathered at Ben Aïcha in 1999 carved animals and abstract motifs, some works spreading across several boulders as single installations.
- The railway passing the rock is a single 704-km line, opened in 1963, linking the iron mines of Zouérat with the port of Nouadhibou.
- Each ore train is hauled by two diesel locomotives pulling 200 to 210 wagons, each loaded with up to 84 tonnes of iron ore.
- Some travellers ride the line for free perched on top of the ore wagons, crossing the desert under the open sky.
Why it is worth it
In the flat, empty sands of north-western Mauritania a single dome of bare rock rises abruptly from the desert floor with nothing of comparable size anywhere around it. Ben Amera, also spelled Ben Amira, is regarded as the largest monolith in Africa and is often ranked just behind Australia's great inselbergs among the biggest single rocks on Earth. Its rounded granite flanks climb several hundred metres above the surrounding plain to a summit about 550 metres above sea level.
Geologically the rock is an inselberg: a resistant mass of granite that has survived while the land around it was worn down. Its smooth slabs are crossed by darker dykes of basalt and by veins of quartzite, and those long, clean faces now carry climbing routes of various grades with nearly 500 metres of vertical gain. Ben Amera is not alone. Some 7.5 km to the north-west stands a smaller companion, Ben Aïcha, and a third dome, Ben Haddad, lies a similar distance to the north-east. At the turn of the millennium, in 1999, a group of international artists gathered at the foot of Ben Aïcha and carved sculptures into the granite boulders scattered around its base, turning the site into an open-air gallery in the middle of the desert.
The monolith stands about 4 km north of the Mauritania Railway, the line on which the country's famous iron-ore trains – up to 3 km long, among the longest in the world – haul ore from the mines of the interior to the Atlantic port of Nouadhibou. The trains rumbling past the lonely rock are part of the landscape here, and the desert track that reaches Ben Amera runs parallel to the rails before crossing them.
Getting there
Ben Amera lies in the Adrar region, about 102 km north of the town of Atar. The airport listed nearest is Tazadit Airport (OUZ) at Zouérat, about 208 km away; Atar also has its own airport (ATR). There is no paved road to the rock: the approach leaves the road between Atar and Zouérat and follows a sandy track alongside the iron-ore railway.
On these lists
From the encyclopaedia
Ben Amera is Africa's largest monolith, rising 633 metres (2,077 ft) above the desert floor. It is the world's second-largest monolith, after only Uluru in Australia. Ben Amera is located in Mauritania, near the border with Western Sahara. It lies 4 kilometres (2.5 mi) north of the train track where the famous Iron Ore Train travels between Nouâdibhou and Choûm.
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