Friday, April 11, 2008 – DOUZ

This morning started with a quick trip down the highway to the train station where we boarded the “Red Lizard”, a 1920s passenger train that now transports tourists over a mountain pass for novelty and photo ops. It turns around at the Seldja phosphate mine.

Views from the "Red Lizard":







The most memorable part of the train trip was the rude French tourists. When we arrived most, if not all, of the seats were already taken. They refused to give up seats for people who were obviously old and unsteady. Our guide had to really yell at them to give up even a single seat. The worst part is that most of the French tourists were traveling as families, so the seats were occupied by bored teenagers who were either sleeping or playing their PSPs.

From the train station we started the drive south east toward the Sahara. We stopped mid-way through the Chott El Jerid salt lake to visit the “toilettes normales” (pit toilets) and do a bit of shopping. As I was holding the toilet door shut for Mom, I looked over toward the bus and saw broken pieces of belt flying out from the engine compartment. When Mom was finished using the toilets I went to our guide and driver to tell them about the broken belt.

Views from the road:







It was the air conditioning belt that broke, the same one that broke the day before and the day before that. Our driver Sharif replaced it with a spare belt but we could hear it slipping and grinding as we continued our drive across the salt lake.

We arrived at Douz around 5pm. It was extremely hot so everyone changed into bathing suits and headed down to the pool. There was a group of hairy guys smoking cigarettes and drinking beer at the shallow end of the pool. (Most of our group had congregated at the deep end.) Mom doesn’t like deep water so she and I worked our way through the group of guys and eased our way into the shallow end via the stairs.

We discovered that the shallow end was actually quite deep, so Mom opted to stay at that end of the pool by herself. I joined the other ladies at the other end of the pool. While I was there, one of the guys struck up a conversation with Mom. She learned that they were from all over Russia and eastern Europe and were on a off-road BMW motorcycle safari through Tunisia. They’d just crossed 130km of hard sand desert. One guy told Mom that they’d each drank 6 liters of water that day and none of them could pee. That shows you how hard the riding was and how hot it was that day.

The bikes and bike maintenance truck:





That night we had the opportunity to ride camels into the Sahara Desert at sunset. The tour company kitted us out in desert gear and then helped us mount the camels. I thought that our guides would also ride camels but they didn’t. Instead, they each led a pair of camels by hand.

Views from the camel ride:







We rode about 1.5km into the desert and then stopped to admire the “sunset”, which of course was completely obscured by the sand storm. Instead we took lots of photos of camels. Mom’s camel decided to roll over on his side and thrash back and forth in the sand. Another camel joined in. It was the most hilarious thing. Just before dark we all got back onto our camels for the ride home. The camels knew it was the end of the day and practically trotted back.

More camel pictures:





I know it was complete tourist kitsch but it was a heckuva lot of fun. I’d do it again, and preferably for a longer ride.