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Who would have thought that it'd be hot in Africa's Sahara Desert in the summer?? Somewhere, somehow, Peter and I neglected that minor detail when we set off with our little, rented Renault. Holding tight to our budget, we also neglected to investigate the car rental personnel's look of curiosity when we said 'no' to the more expensive car, with A/C. It's difficult to explain how hot +50 is, but the best way, is to sit in your oven right before you put in the Turkey... a convection oven would be perfect...the ones that blow the hot air around. As a matter of fact we discovered that closing the window is actually better than keeping it open, further proving that convection ovens do work better, as with the windows closed, it took us about half as long to be completely cooked. The air/wind was the hottest I've ever felt. Even my years in Thailand could not have prepared me for this dry, scourching heat. It took only about a half an hour for our cool water to become too hot to hold and the steering wheel to be blazin'. After about 5 litres of hot water, and swirling memories about jounal
Me in the pool ahhhh
I rarely got out but when I did it was bizzarly cold articles on degrading plastic due to heat, I couldn't bear anymore hot-water-drinking, besides it made us gag. Peter, being his innovative self, started to rely on the hot water as his personal supply of moisture. So everytime the water became too hot to touch he would drown himself in it and open the windows until all the moisture had been sucked away by the desert air. It is really that hot and really that dry...all this talk about dry heat and moist heat...I don't know.... if moist heat is worse I don't ever want to know!
Our main reason...well my main reason for going to the desert was to ride a camel! Peter wanted to go to relive his childhood memories of the film Laurence of Arabia. When I told him we could ride camels into the Sahara he quickly got excited recalling Peter O'Tool's "tut, tut" camel commands from the movie.
Our first night in Merzouga, the town just north of the Erg Chebbi Saharan dunes, was interesting. These desert towns are almost ghost towns in the day. People just don't go out. When they do, the men are dressed in the traditional breezy, Afircan jallabyas (loose
robes) and the women are covered from head to toe in shifon scarves and cotton, almost as if they are all hiding from something...the sun! The homes are set up in small compounds and designed to keep the hot sun and hot sandy winds out and the semi-cool air in.
We hadn't slept well in days because of the intense heat (even at night the temperature rarely drops below 35 deg) and so decided to treat outselves for a night and splurge. The hotel we chose was a gift! We had air conditioning and a pool! It was owned by an Italian, who of course was not around in summer because it was too hot, but it was beautifully decorated, food was great and the pool was the best ever...no the AC was the best ever... we slept for 12 hours!
The next morning we lounged around the pool and by late afternoon we started on our camel trek to the dunes. Camels are fascinating creatures and I can't get enough of them. They've evolved perfectly for the desert and seem to be completely ok with the heat. We rode dromedare, or one humped camels, and I can
only imagine that my boney butt on his hump was as uncomfortable for him as it was for me...two days later and we are still compensating for our tender rears. But they are really neat, their squishy paws/hoofs (?) expand in the sand like prefect sand shoes, they're eyes have big lids to keep the sand out and of course they have a hump to conserve energy...not water as we learned.
Pain and all it was a lot of fun and the scenery was spectacular. The dunes were the color of the classic windows desktop scene and the sand was silky and soft. We stayed overnight near the border of Algeria and we were accompanied by 2 french Canadians. Our Berber guide brought his drum and when he was done playing for us he asked the 4 of us to sing a Canadian song..all we could come up with was the National Anthem and so they sang in French and Peter and I in English. It was pretty funny as neither of us could finish, but on reflection, it was nice to consider Canada for a while given all that plagues the countries surrounding us.
We're back in
Marakesh now and will be making our way south to Mauritania within a few days. I think we will soon be refering to it as Maurhottier soon ... haha ... oh Lesleigh 😊
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Jean
non-member comment
WOW
Absolutely fantastic!!!!I got overheated just reading about the heat and the pics are fabulous!!!