May 16, 2010 — 7:30 pm

Forget everything I said before. This place is not romantic. It’s deadly, unfor­giv­ing, and miser­able. Full of pain and agony.

Do not come here. Do not let your loved ones come here.

Okay, maybe not that bad, but right now Laura and I are in low spirits. We’re tired. We ran out of mineral water, and can’t help but remem­ber how Rashid care­lessly drank some, and used some more for dishes and washing on our first day. Rashid can drink the well water, but we can’t for legit­im­ate fear that the bac­teria and microbes will make us sick. We’ve put some treat­ment pills in a bottle of well water, but have to wait two hours for them to do their work. We’re very thirsty, and have aches and pains through­out our bodies. Rashid said it would be an hour from our lunch spot, but it’s actu­ally been about three, and the heat is the harshest we have exper­i­enced. My little travel compass/thermometer maxed out today at an unbear­able 50 degrees Celsius.

We’re at Erg Chigaga as I write this, finally, but rather than feel proud or excited by this unique place, we feel hollow and taken advant­age of. The man in Zagora who sold us our camel trek, Mohammed, was very friendly, with a sin­cer­ity of laughter that bespoke of a straight-forward and honest busi­ness man. So when we asked him ques­tions about how long each leg of “the ride” would be, and how long we would be “on the camels on any given stretch”, his answer of three to four hours sat­is­fied us. Yet here we are. It’s the end of our last day in the desert, we’re at Erg Chigaga, the great 40km expanse of dunes on the Algerian border, and we haven’t been on a damn camel once. We walked 60km through the Sahara Desert to get here, and we’re feeling too beat phys­ic­ally and men­tally to climb the great 300m dune that’s just right over there.

Shariff and Mimoun drudge on. We try to keep up.

Erg Chigaga stretches for about 40km, and is also only about 40km from Algeria.

The dunes of Erg Chigaga. “Erg” means dune.

Dunes and tam­ar­ist trees.

We asked after the camels again when we arived. Rashid’s response was the same as usual: apres, apres, “after, after.” This time we pushed him. “After what, Rashid? After we set up camp?”

“Wahha, wahha,” he said. “Okay, okay.”

But then, before we knew it, he sent the camels off into the distant plain to feed. We can see them now, from where we sit atop a small dune. They’re at least 4km away and the light is failing fast. There’s no way we can muster the energy to get out to them, and no way Rashid can collect them before sun down. We simply can’t under­stand why he won’t let us ride them. Laura is very dis­ap­poin­ted and upset. I can’t blame her, either. She never rode a camel while she lived in Saudi Arabia. During  her one oppor­tun­ity she was too young and scared to give it a go, and her hopes of making up for it by spend­ing three days on one have been sunk. Riding a camel was one of her main goals coming to Morocco, and we thought we had it all but cinched when we booked our tour.

At this moment, right now, we are in one of the lows that make the highs of travel feel so amazing in com­par­ison. It sounds like a small thing, riding a camel, but after the beating heat and strain of walking 60km in the desert, that small thing is the whole world to us right now. We’re pissed off, frankly.

One of my goals on this trip, and in my life, is to “live without expect­a­tion,” what the Hindus call “relin­quish­ing the fruits of your labour.” While I can’t claim to be there yet, I am trying. But it’s not easy. This trip was not what we expec­ted. We’ve decided to take it up with Mohammed when we see him after. For now, I’m not sure my tired legs can even get me up one of the bigger dunes to watch the sun go down. My ankle is swollen like a base­ball and each step is agony.

Epilogue

That was my last entry in my journal from the dessert. It’s a sour note to end on, and one I’m happy to say didn’t last long. Within five minutes of that entry, we had purged the neg­at­iv­ity from our systems. Me, through writing it down, pretty much as you’ve just read it, and Laura through telling me how she was feeling and shed­ding a few stressed-out, tired, tears. We enjoyed a hug and felt some of the excite­ment and chal­lenge come back to us. Aching, dehyd­rated, tired to the bone, we egged each other on and raced up the dunes, toward the highest peak of Erg Chigaga. The sunset was coming on fast. We could see several other vis­it­ors sil­hou­et­ted at the top of one of the lesser dunes, watch­ing the sunset we had sought for four days through the desert. No doubt they had been brought out that after­noon in the rel­at­ive comfort of a 4WD, and the thought of them enjoy­ing what we had earned while we sat and moped buoyed us on further, until we were panting and gasping for breath as our tired legs carried us up one, then another of the big dunes. Soon we were on the ridge leading to the top of the biggest. The 4WD crowd were no doubt too lazy to bother climb­ing it, we told each other, laughing.

“Good,” we declared. “We earned it. Those bas­tards couldn’t get through the desert. They prob­ably have air-conditioned tents down there.”

And although we made the top moments after the sun had dipped below the horizon, the effort had redeemed us. The sunset didn’t matter. Being here didn’t really matter, either. But the effort of just getting here did, camels or no camels. That last sprint redeemed us, and it redeemed a desert trek that will live with us always, stand­ing out among months of travel as some­thing unlike any­thing else we’ve ever done.

It also didn’t hurt that we ran into Mohammed that night. The next morning, Laura got her camel ride after all.

Sunset over Erg Chigaga. The bas­tards on the top of the dune likely got out here by 4WD. Bastards.

The view from the top. The sun had just set on us.

Laura chan­nels Arabian Nights.

Your intrepid blog­gers. Yes, it is that big. Bigger even.

Camel rides, at last.

This is the final part of a six-part series on our camel trek in the Moroccoan Sahara. To read the full story, please click here.