Sahara diary Part III

[dinahsmum]

Monday



The camp came to life from around 6am and by 6.45 everyone was on the move, dressing in the same many layers as the previous night, visiting the toilet tents or the surrounding dunes, packing up sleeping bags, replenishing water bottles and generally getting ready for the day ahead, the first full day of walking. Much discussion of the snoring heard during the night and whether the walk might also be a heat of the world snoring championship! One participant came up with the description of the noise as being a Mexican Snore which had passed through the camp in a circular motion!
A hearty breakfast of porridge, bread, jams, cheese spread or cream cheese, pieces of a giant omelette plus tea, coffee or hot chocolate set us up for the day.
Then it was time to take the large luggage bags to a central point for loading onto the camels – poor camels – shed one layer of clothes and assemble for morning exercises. Surprisingly we weren’t stiff or sore in the mornings, that tended to come in the hour between arrival in camp and moving to the social tent for the evening meal. The guides enjoyed watching us stretch and bend and couldn’t help themselves laughing at 50 odd mad Brits as we creaked and groaned and reached and folded
At 8am we set off across Erg Lihoudi which started as a fairly gentle rock field then changed into sand, some soft and flat and some low dunes which amazingly supported tamarisk trees and a low growing bush which looked like a succulent version of thyme and which had fruits like small melons but which were apparently highly poisonous. We were accompanied by 6 camels, three of which were saddled and ready to take any non-walking wounded (of which there were surprisingly few over the whole trip) and three of which carried drinking water, our lunch and fleeces and such which weren’t required during the actual walk.
We stopped for two breaks of about 10 minutes during which the guides and leaders passed around the desert version of trail mix, comprising dates, figs, almonds, honey-roast peanuts and, to our huge surprise, chocolate Time Out bars, kept cool by transportation next to the containers of water, which started out at near freezing, having been in the open during the cool of the night. Lunch of salad bread and fruit was taken in the shade of a surprisingly large tamarisk tree and the afternoon walk was on a flat rocky plateau with the Djebel Bani Mountain range to the north, or to our left as we walked.
Camp that night was near Oued L’Autruche and close to a well. This allowed the more hardy, or perhaps foolhardy, of the group to enjoy a shower in near freezing well water. I stuck with, or perhaps it would be more correct to say stuck to, the tried and tested wet-wipes!
After dinner, at about 9pm, with the camp relaxing and unwinding and the duty frees and Moroccan wine going down nicely, one of the leaders returned to the big tent to announce that the wind was picking up and that those who had planned to sleep under the stars or in a pup tent should go back and secure their belongings. The social gathering ceased and all hurried off to prevent their sleeping bags flying off to Timbuktoo!
The wind, and consequent sandstorm, kept up for the majority of the night, reaching its peak at 3 or 4am.It tore at the large tents, whipping out the pegs on the windward side and allowing the sand to pile inside, covering everything, including the sleeping occupants, with a 3 inch layer of sand. Many of the pup tents had to be abandoned and taken down and they, and their former occupants, were refugees in the big tents for the night. A few small tents, fortuitously placed among the dunes, survived the night but the sand blew under the flysheets and through the mesh of the inner tents to leave the sleeping occupants similarly entombed in sand.
An eventful night!


Distance covered 17 km

To be continued