Day 24 - Morocco, Western Sahara - Sea Baths
Trip Start
Nov 09, 2008
1
20
164
Trip End
Jul 02, 2009
Agadir,
Morocco
Tuesday, December 2, 2008
A lower impact team also started walking this morning, rising with cook group and leaving an hour or so before the rest of us. Think they walked near 7 or 8km before we eventually caught up.
As for me? I'm in team sleep-a-lot. Well as much as a girl can when expected to rise at 6.30. Suzy and I have discussed the possibility of joining the walkers and maybe progressing to running, though not in the league of team hardcore. It'll take us 9 months of solid training before we even come close to joining them
Western Sahara
!Our efforts may be thwarted however as tomorrow we cross over into Mauritania, a place unsuitable for solo travel no matter how miniscule. Will have to wait and see. Mt Cameroon though is now looking like a possibility so would be nice to be a little fitter before endeavouring to hike that in 6 or so weeks time.
So today we continued our drive through the Sahara. It's getting increasingly hot, sandy and windy. We stopped off at the Tropic of Cancer or rather we drove passed the Tropic of Cancer only to reverse, get out and have obligatory photos taken by the not so impressive sign. Further on we came to a camel sign, the novelty of which I'm sure will fade with time or frequency but as yet we're still enjoying it so photos a must.
Nearing lunch we went off road only to near get bogged so decided against going any further, got back on the road and continued driving until we found a more suitable spot complete with a mound of rocks for toilet privacy. That said with the wind and sand whipping around as strong as it was you may as well be peeing in a wind tunnel.
Western Sahara
Oliver and his fellow master chefs Kelvin and Teresa did a sterling job for lunch having cooked up a vegetable frittata the night before. Most delicious indeed and a welcomed change to the stock standard salad rolls and fruit. Lunch stops are generally an hour or so allowing adequate time to stretch legs and give Jay a rest from driving. He is the only person licensed to drive this here truck, if something happens to him we go nowhere. For the past few days we've been pretty much following a dead straight road down the coast. This morning we took a 90 degree turn left and are now driving on a dead straight road with nothing but desert on either side. You really would not like to be stuck out here on your own. There is literally NOTHING!
After lunch we took a vote and came up with a name for the truck - Nahla. It had to be a girl as we figured once bogged the term bitch would be used quite a lot. So here we all are riding Nahla through the Sahara Desert, a place where nothingness can be beautiful.
We aim to get to camp today by 4 or 4.30. Much earlier than usual as we need to do a mass tidy up in readiness for the boarder crossing tomorrow. Booze has to be hidden and things be made to look generally neat and tidy in the hope they'll take one look, deem us to be respectable people and let us into their country without having to haul bags out for inspection and what not
Western Sahara
. Fingers crossed this is indeed the case.Continued... few days later.
Turns out we were ahead of schedule and had rejoined the coast so we ended up being able to do a pit stop by the sea. Best of all it wasn't a cliff so we were able to go for a swim. Yay our first swim since arriving on the mighty African continent. Teresa, the out of water scuba instructor, was off in an instance whilst, taking full advantage, Rachel and I grabbed our lush soap, shampoo bars and razors and off we went for a salt water bath. Oh it was lovely. Cold but lovely and thankfully not overly salty so we did suffer that yucky sticky feeling afterwards.
Some of the boys also got in, as did Kristy. Kate stood knee deep and acted as a moveable target for the boys on shore to throw stones at. Bless her, I think she's the only person actually nice enough to encourage people throwing rocks at her with "Oooh that was a good one, nearly got me."
Hung there for a bit before climbing back on Nahla and continuing to our overnight destination down a seemingly never ending dirt road
Western Sahara
. Not doubting Jay's intentions for a second we ended up at the most fabulous bush camp spot ever... beautiful massive sand dune totally and utterly away from anything and everything. As soon as the engine stopped we were off... racing to get up the giant which seemed to increase in both height and angle. Sinking up to your knees one step forward two back until finally you were at the top. Oh it was wonderful. I proceeded to enjoy the moment even more by running up and doing massive leaps off the top - red dress flying around me, thank god I still had my bathers on!
Jamie and a few others decided to take on a few rolls ending with sand in every conceivable place. After a few more leaps it was a criss cross run down sand flying everywhere. Good to see that sea bath had come in handy!
As the sun was going down the sky turned an amazing pink and orange so Jamie, Mike, Tom and I made another hike to the top of the dune. You could see for miles and the colour in the sky was incredible.
Later on in the night Jamie, Mike & Barsby tried their hand at sand boarding using every imaginable item possible - metal bowls, plastic container lids, eski lid and finally the big massive cook table which took three of them to lug it up to the top only to move inches at a snails pace when they finally tried to go down. Hahahaha despite the effort none of them paid off but it certainly provided us with a few good giggles.
Whilst sitting around the camp fire we noticed a light on top of the dune
Western Sahara
. Thinking we had accounted for everyone we were slightly concerned at who might but up there looking down on us. A few seconds later a second light appeared further along the dune, then a third. Hmm what do we have here? Going far left Jamie decided to do a stealth mission... when he didn't come back I decided to join him. Making it to the top, in anyway but stealth (it's a little hard to blend in with a pure white sand dune when in all black!) I was greeted by Kate, Clara, Luke and Jamie. Good effort on them for getting up there without any of us noticing. We then had a great time once again bounding down the face of the dune... if only going up was as much fun.Laughing, joking, drinking, chatting we stayed sat around the fire. As time went by more and more people called it a night and drifted off back to their tents. By then end of it there were but a handful of us, slightly drunken soles, left by the fire. Now I'm not entirely sure whose idea it was but the idea of tent tipping soon came up. Needless to say one thing lead to another and tents were soon flying all over the place. Sam and Suzy were the first to go. In retaliation Sam then went to tip over Barsby's - only Barsby wasn't in it but his tent buddy Luke was so he ended up being flipped on his side. Sorry Luke. He then hit Oliver's and mine which was no big drama as we were sat by the fire laughing.
After that a very strong wind and/or people then swept through and undid Josh and Rachel's tent causing it to collapse on them. Rach and Josh, I was an innocent bystander on this one so please make your payback gentle!
Crawling into our tent an hour or so later we were most amused at all our stuff being everywhere due to our tent having been flipped on its side. Thankfully by then we were either too drunk or tired to care so just crawled into our sleeping bags and drifted off into deep deep sleep.
