Ou est la Frontier?

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I left off as our journey into the Sahara began. Half an hour into the desert our 4x4 broke down. It took about 20 minutes to fix, do to the magical appearance of two dirt bike riders who helped us out. We travelled through Dra'a towards the Algerian border. The desert is large and sweeping, but not all of it is like the orange sand dunes you see on tv. A lot of it is flat dry land with small shrubs and scattered volcanic rocks. Though I asked everywhere, no one could tell me where the rocks came from. There is also evidence of life- tracksin the ground from birds, snakes, lizards, the remains of goat bones and food waste frol human camps; camel droppings. Anyways, an hour of driving later brought us the what could be seen as the beginning of the sand dunes that mark post cards and nature magazines around the world. They rose impressively out of the earth to a great height, and I found myself incapable of understanding why they were so tall. the first dunes marked a border between the flat, earth and oasis and the vast stretches of sand spreading out towards the horizon. After descending the dunes, we visited an oasis, however it had been walled in and the nomads who took us told us that they couldnt access the water any more. A doctor had found the site and without justification, had built a gaint wall around the oasis and started charging people to visit it. Morocco's seven year drought has limited the number of oasis and this one had been important for herds of goats and camels.

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