It was extremely windy when we got up and our drive on was eery, with sand swirling across the desert beneath an overcast sky, the horizon barely visible through the haze. The temperature was cool but the atmosphere oppressive.
Fun photo stop at a graveyard of truck and car carcasses in windswept haze. Extraordinary sight with six vehicle bodies (most of them were 2WD vehicles) within a few metres of each other.
We took an early lunch stop among huge, petrified elephant-hide rocks, cooking and eating on the truck while swirling winds whipped sand across the desert floor. Vicki tried to mat down a sand dune but had to snail down in the end.
Finally emerged from oblivion into the border town of In Guezzam, our first glimpse of civilisation being a sea of refugee tents. Here we met a waiting Gerber expedition truck, half the passengers processed and the rest waiting while the Algerian officials ate lunch.
We bucketed water from a well behind a tiny restaurant. In one corner of the yard was a shower room with wooden foot platform and drainage, in the other a small but more traditional toilet, whose users had obviously had trouble with their aim, so stank of raw sewage. Cleaned off in the shower, then returned to the truck, where the rest of the crew were arse-up washing in assorted bowls. Must have been quite a sight for the locals.
Eventually the wheels of Algerian customs started turning again. Officials checked our currency exchange forms, and they queried Gary, Linda and me, sending shivers down our spines. Kel’s fast talking got us through that obstacle, only to run into another wall of Algerian bureaucracy. Having spent three quarters of an hour doing bugger all, the officers presented us with additional forms to complete that then had to be checked against our passports. This process was so frustratingly slow that only five of us were processed before the border shut for the day, marooning us for the night.
We camped with another Exodus truck, pitching our tents back-to-back, practically breathing down each other’s necks. In a gale, Vicki, Jeff, Ben, Ann and I sat around four square-inches of fire coals, drinking red wine and raiding Nikki’s cigarettes. We looked in on the other truck after hearing their fire was bigger than ours and found them waiting for steamed pudding!
The howling gale continued through the night, the truck rocking and the tents billowing like a fleet of sailing ships. I kept imagining inches of sand in the macaroni.
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