GO BACK

Scroll down a little and recheck the part about the Sahara. It's been updated with new photos added. Thank you

Desert scenes

Busted at the airport

One rock we did not actually try to take out in our baggage

I came through the metal detector at Tamanransett Airport on our way out of the desert back to Algiers and Hawley had already been stopped by the transportation workers.

"Ma'am, do you have rocks?"

Did we have rocks! We'd spent a week in the Sahara selecting and stashing pebbles in our pockets and back packs. We had green ones and rippled purples ones and purple and white and rose ones. We even had one that looked like a sculpted rose. We had about 50 rocks in all between us.

"Interdict!" the guards told us. You can't take rocks out of the desert.

WHAT?!

Our guidebook had not mentioned this. Our guides had helped us pick out the best rocks. This wasn't fair. Hawley protested mightily as I was digging through a week's worth of sandy underwear and dirty socks looking for rocks. A line of passengers built up behind us waiting to get through the metal detector. The guards were smirking. "This happens all the time," they told us.

They took our Coke bottle of sand too. CAN'T WE JUST HAVE SOME? Hawley wheedled.

They agreed we could have one each. Hawley bent down into her pack and hauled out a boulder with two hands.

"No. Not that one," the guards objected. Hawley began going through the rocks one by one, moaning, "but we picked each of these so carefully." The people behind us in the line shifted.

"Here's a nice one," one of the guards helpfully pointed out, trying to hurry things along.

We were pretty sad as we sat in the waiting room with our much lighter suitcases. A group of Swiss tourists got to talking to us and we told them what happened. "Oh, our guide told us we couldn't take rocks," they said. "So we have them in our pockets and shoes."

Sahara safari

Saharan faux killing fields

Desert vine



Hawley with gazelle food we first thought was baby skull


What you pack into the back of an SUV when you are driving paying customers into a vast desert where you might die if you break down in the wrong place is a matter of some importance. We inventoried our load.

There were pans and tubs and tin dishes and a tea set and firewood and bedding and an all-purpose mat and canned goods and fresh produce and bread and a spare tire and 113 liters of water and 240 liters of gasoline.

The gas, Naou Naou explained, outweighed water in importance because with it you could go look for water.

One day in our travels we came upon two men seated outside a wrecked truck in the middle of no where surrounded by 100s of acres of sand and nothing else. Plastic soda bottles of water were lined up by one of the tires. A radio was set up on a stack of boxes. They'd been there out in the middle of the wasteland alone for 12 days.

They worked for a petroleum research firm and they could not leave their disabled vehicle alone, so they'd waited for someone to come along who could report their problem and now were waiting for the help they'd requested to come back.

Ahmed turned over his pack of cigarettes and one of the stranded men immediately lit up.

I think I'd go nuts. The Tuaregs laughed. The weather was good. No sand storms this time of year. They had plenty of water. No problem.

Several times we came to sections of the desert that resembled pictures of the Cambodian killings fields, but in miniature. What looked like the skulls of hundreds of babies littered the desert floor as if the infants had been left out to dry.

Actually they were bleached fruits -- the Tuaregs did not know the name of them in English but in Arabic it sounded like hedja -- Tuaregs find them bitter and won't eat them. But they grow plentifully on vines on the desert floor and sustain the considerable gazelle population of the Sahara. We saw some and were as excited as if seeing a lion or leopard on an East African safari.

Hotel of the Petrified Forest

For reasons not explained, the flight from Algiers south into the desert left at 11 p.m. By the time we got through security checks and baggage claim it was nearing 3 a.m. when we arrived. Two men from the travel agency, thank God, were on hand with one of those little placards with our names on it and they loaded us into an SUV and drove off into the dark.

Within 50 meters the road was surrounded on both sides by nothing but sand. SAHARA! we squealed involuntarily. They shook their heads at the stupid tourists.

We were really looking forward to getting to our hotel until we got to it. The Hotel Bois Petrifie was a long low-slung building in utter darkness in a parking lot that contained not a single car or bus in the parking lot. It looked abandoned. The men let us out at the front door and said our guide would be there to pick us up after breakfast.

A skinny, laconic French-speaking man with a cigarette dangling from his fingers led us to Room 5. It was like a camp site with two sway-back beds, a refrigerator with a bottle of water in it, and a tiny TV on a plastic table.

Hawley was distraught that there was no itinerary for us, no schedule for the next day and where was the hair dryer?

We are going into the desert, I reminded her. How good does your hair have to look?

We fell asleep immediately after.

The next morning as we were eating stale bread and jam in an empty breakfast room, a tall dark man in a blue turban appeared at our table and asked if we were ready.

He led us out to an unmarked white SUV. Another man in a turban sat in the front seat and the back was loaded to the top with gear. The driver started up the car. I got in, ready to go. Hawley got in, not so ready.

Who ARE you? she asked loudly.

Quoi? the man in the passenger seat, turned around to ask.

WHO IS THE GUIDE? she asked more loudly. WHERE ARE WE GOING? WHAT IS THE PROGRAM HERE?

On my side of the car, I realized that these were very good questions. I probably should have wondered about them too.

Somehow I have fallen into complacency that despite the seeming lack of organization and infrastructure things do eventually get done.

This how we met Naou-Naou, our driver and guide, and Ahmed, our cook, for the next week.

and the desert we don't

The desert we know

Ingenuity

We filled two water bottles with vodka and Compari to bring in our backpack and every night after dark we had a cocktail without bothering our Taureg guides, who are Muslims who consider alcohol sinful. We thought we were so cute.

Until NuNu told us about the "special" water the tourists all bring into the desert. And the Italians who always pack cases of wine. Is that a problem for you as a Muslim, Hawley asked diffidently? No problem, he assured her. Still, we didn't flaunt it.

Then came a time when the Compari was gone and we had no mixers. Hawley proved what an ingenious traveler she is. She fixed her citrusy-flavered vitamins in water and we had vodka and vitamin cocktails.

Delicious and healthful too.

How can you compare a trip to the desert with a tour through opera houses of Europe

OK, well, you really can't, but this last trip to the Sahara ranks right up with the Opera tour with Mikey, Bud and Mary in 2005 as the most memorable of my traveling.

"You just walk for miles around a wasteland and that is fun?" a friend asked. It's not like that.

First, you don't walk for miles. You can't. It's too hot and you can't cover the distances. Mostly you travel by SUV -- not great for the environment but faster and far less painful than camels. We did a half-day tour on camels and it was enough for me to swear off ever again riding on the back of anything without a motor. My inner thighs are bruised and camels smell bad and are covered in flies. ugh.

But in the SUV you can go from one landmark and beautiful area in the desert to another. The variation in the landscape was startling. We know deserts mostly from movies and so we kept asking for DUNES! while our guides rolled their eyes. We have dune shots straight out of Lawrence of Arabia, but they are only part of the desert. There were also mountains, caves, oases, even a waterfall.

Rock art

Saharan Rock Art is a big draw for tourists because it dates back centuries and pictures a far different Saharan, a place full of big game animals and plush vegetation.

Hawley and Ahmed in turbans

This traditional Tuarig shield against sun and wind is pronouned --ah-CHEEZ Merchants in the markets around the desert make money selling tourists three or four meter lengths of cheap cloth -- that can be turned into desert turbans.

and the large: Here the sun rises over Asserkrem

the small-scale beauty of the Sahara

Our cook, dancer and jokester in the desert

Ahmed taught us how to wrap a three or four meter strip of cloth -- traditionally blue -- into an impressive turbine.

Our guide and his tea

Three times a day Noua Noua (pronounced NU NU) would pile up a few sticks of wood and paper, usually our dried out used facial wipes, and make a fire. He'd pull out a crocheted box of tiny shot glasses and pour a thimbleful of sweet minty tea for each of us. This ritual became part of our lives in the desert

Hawley in desert setting

THE SAHARA

Our week-long trip to the Sahara was fabulous, one of the best of my life.

I had a lot of reservations about this sleeping in the desert thing. I have never been big on camping and I've read too much about horned vipers in the sand and scorpions.

"Do you have a tent?" our guides asked as almost the first question when we met. NO, we gasped, DO WE NEED THEM? IS THIS A PROBLEM? DON'T YOU HAVE TENTS?"

They didn't. At this time of year, you don't need them. There is little chance of rain, the animals are kept at bay by cool nighttime temperatures and all you really need is a mat and a blanket. Hmmm.

I was leery especially when I found that the mats were thin and tiny -- I have ironing board pads that are more comfortable looking. And I was also leery about the bathroom facilities. There are none. I found myself longing for the holes in the floor in Algerian newsrooms.

But then came that first night in the wild. And it's magical. It was if we'd put our ironing board pads on the floor of a planetarium. All night long the moon and planets and more stars than I have ever seen revolved in a giant bowl around us. We'd stay under the blankets but wake up every so often just to watch the sky. Shooting stars, clusters were common. Our guides told us to watch for satellites which you can see streaking across the Sahara.