The Detailed Adventures of Monson in the Sahara - Day 2

I groggily dragged myself out of bed and made my way into the corner of the bathroom that had a showerhead protruding from the wall. There was no shower curtain. There wasn’t even a shower to step into; just a hole in the bathroom floor surrounded by tiles two inches high. The night before I had noticed two wires hanging down from the hot water boiler. After feeling the boiler and sensing that it wasn’t working, I stuck the two wires into an outlet in the wall. Sure enough, the power indicator lit up. So, in theory, I had hot water for my shower. Well, you may recall that Communism may have seemed good in theory, but things generally didn’t go so well in practice. Such was the case with my shower. I had a communist shower. First the water came out freezing. Then the water turned scalding hot. Then the water stopped altogether. 5-10 seconds later, ice cold water would come shooting towards me. All of this happened without me touching the taps. This process repeated for the duration of my shower. Needless to say, by the end of it I was feeling quite awake and very disappointed that the water temperatures weren’t working together for the good of all mankind… or more specifically, for me.

Around noontime the jeeps for our desert safari showed up, along with the jeeps for another group of tourists. Two of the jeeps were brand new, solid looking Hummer type vehicles. The other two were these old, nasty, run down looking vehicles. Naturally, the other group of tourists hopped into the hot rod jeeps and left us with poor old Dumpy and Lumpy. After ten minutes of engine churning our jeep reluctantly started up and we were on our way! To my disappointment we stuck to the road for the majority of our journey. Our drivers did, however, stop at a few of the attractions on the way to our desert campsite. The first one was a big volcano-looking thing that we climbed up and got a nice view of the surrounding volcano-type hills. It was pretty neat. After that we drove to a cafeteria in the middle of another desert oasis where we ate our lunch.

Next up was Crystal Mountain. Crystal Mountain is just a small rock hill that is made out of crystals. It’s not really as photogenic as it sounds. It’s more fun to dig through the rocks to try and find big fancy looking crystals to take home. That’s the crazy thing about these desert attractions. They’re all set up so that you go an pick your souvenirs off the ground for free! In Canada I’m sure that would be against the law or something! Whatever, I enjoyed my time looking for treasure. At every stop I always tried to find dinosaur bones so I could get rich and famous and be the man that everyone else wants to be when they grow up. The funny/disconcerting thing about our visit to Crystal Mountain was the fact that our jeep got stuck in the sand not even 2 feet off of the road. This Jeep was supposed to take us off-roading through the Western Desert, and here we got stuck less than a meter from the road. Wow. We were the laughing stock of all the tourists at Crystal Mountain. Everyone amused themselves as we rocked back and forth in the sand in an attempt to free ourselves from the unforgiving clutches of the Sahara. Eventually the driver got out of the vehicle and manually engaged the 4-wheel-drive mode. Phew, all this time it was only in 2 wheel drive. Anyways, eventually we got unstuck and made it to Crystal Mountain. Everyone in our vehicle got out feeling slightly sheepish, as if it were our fault that we got stuck.

Life went on, though. We made our way through the Black Desert, into the White Desert. Somewhere in the White Desert we stopped to pick Desert Roses. A Desert Rose is a black rock that is much heavier than it looks. I’m not sure what kind of rock it is, but some rock geek could probably tell me. Anyways, these rocks look kind of like a cross between petrified raspberries and black roses, or something like that. While looking for these Desert Roses, I secretly began an archeological excavation for dinosaur bones. Still no luck.

From there we went on to the Land of the Albino Smurfs. That’s what I called it, anyways. It was a place with a bunch of big white mushroom looking rocks. I figured if you waited until the sun went down, and the moon was full enough, you could probably see a city of albino Smurfs emerge from the crevices of these white mushroom rocks. Ayman, our jeep driver didn’t seem interested in sticking around to see the Smurfs, though, so we continued on our way (after I looked for hidden dinosaur bones, of course).

This is where the trip got really fun! By this time we were no longer driving on roads, but on the soft sand of the White Desert. At this point in our journey we zig zagged at breakneck speeds past thousands upon thousands of igloo-looking rocks, over sand dunes, and around protruding rocks in the ground. It was great. Ayman, our driver, was a little riskier in his driving and seemed to enjoy showing off a lot more than Mahmoud, the driver of the other jeep in our caravan. Because of this, I was thoroughly enjoying my life threatening sprint through the Sahara! I thought of how bored the people in the other vehicle must have been while we were having the time of our lives in this jeep! I later found out that they weren’t envious at all, and were in fact glad that they weren’t driving with such a reckless person. Pshhh, losers. They’re just too proud to admit their jealousy.

After racing around the thousands of petrified igloos, the sun finally began its descent behind the horizon. This meant that it was time for us to stop driving for the day and to set up camp. At this point, I realized how spoiled we were on this desert trip of ours because our drivers completely set up our campsite for us and began cooking our dinner, all without needing any help from us. I like how our guides start fires. They don’t waste time with boy scout junk like axes and kindling. Nope. They just pull a huge four foot log from the roof of the jeep and douse it with gasoline. I’ve heard that some actually mix camel poo with it to get the coals going. As far as I know this wasn’t the case here, but I wasn’t really watching that closely. While the fire blazed away, the men cooked us a gourmet dinner of fresh chicken and rice with vegetables in a tomotoey sauce. It was pretty good stuff!

The rest of the evening was spent huddled around the campfire, roasting marshmallows and singing songs. Actually, only a couple songs were sung, and they were sung to us by Ayman and Mahmoud. But they were hilarious songs! Ayman found out that the Dutch really like coffee so they sang a song about Nescafe. I recorded part of it on my digital camera, so maybe I can post it online eventually if I can find someone to host it for me. Ayman finished the song off with “Fantastic Without Plastic”. That was one of the few English phrases he seemed to know. Another phrase he used from time to time was “I’m Soooorry!” I remember hearing that one after we got stuck at Crystal Mountain… and pretty much every time we started his vehicle up (or at least attempted to).

Later on in the evening another Bedouin guide came and joined us by the fire. His name was also Mahmoud. Mohammed, Akhmed, and Mahmoud seem to be pretty common names here. Everyone else left the campfire to go for a walk in the desert (yes, it was pitch dark, hardly a sliver of a moon) so I stayed and hung out with Ayman and the Mahmouds in hopes that I could practice my Arabic. About 30 seconds after everyone left we ran out of common words to communicate with so I just sat there lounging by the fire while these three strangers talked amongst themselves. After everyone else went to bed, I started trying to teach Ayman and Mahmoud English, cause that seemed easier than me learning Arabic (at least from them). In response, they taught me that you can mix sand with wax to make a big flame in the fire. Pretty cool!

Eventually we all retired to our beds and gazed at the stars before nodding off to sleep. Well, I didn’t sleep, of course… but that pretty much goes without saying. I’m one of the pickiest sleepers in the world, I think. Anyways, that concludes Day 2. If you’re still reading, I’m impressed!