Deserts and sand and camels

We’re sitting in a cafe in El Saloum, a small port town just inside the Egyptian border. There have been some eventualities. As the sun sets on a day we were hoping to be 220kms away, in Mercer on the way to Cairo, we are waiting for a 9pm all-night bus to the capital. We were denied the entry of our bikes, so one our self-appointed helpers at the border has hatched a plan for us to go in person to a couple of agencies in Cairo to secure Egyptian insurance. Then we return, on another overnight bus, to retrieve the bikes and ride them back across Egypt. I guess it’s a bit of a sign of the particular mindset we’ve entered that we received this news with only the slightest disagreement. In truth we feel like we’ve already succeeded: We got the bikes to Egypt. Now are the negotiations first to get them in the country and then on cargo ships to Australia, which feels at the moment like tying up some loose ends, though I’m sure will prove to be exceedingly difficult in their own ways. We flew to another country, bought 2 motorcycles and arranged registration and insurance. With these bikes we travelled about 8500kms across 7 countries. It’s been a hell of a time. Matt conceded that he won’t be ready for another birthday for quite a while.

The last couple of days in Libya were good. The day before yesterday was the last big day of the trip, 650kms one some fairly isolated roads. We were making good speed and conditions were basically perfect. There wasn’t much to see, the major town we were passing, Surt, we were recommended to avoid by our guide. It is incidentally the home city of Gaddafi’s family. It was a long day, and at the end of it we were wrecked.
Yesterday while eating a chocolate syrup covered pan au chocolat for breakfast we were going over the route plan with our guide and driver and it came up that their idea of our route differed from ours. The standard tour I suppose moves up along the coast, whereas Matt and I had our eye on a short cut that travels 400kms straight through the desert, cutting off the eastern bulge of Libya and avoiding a bunch of towns that we were learning at this point were worth leaving out. It also took us through remote Sahara, and we wanted to see more of that. Initially it seemed that we would not be able to do this traverse because our guide said that it wasn’t allowed. It became apparent that the guides have to file a route plan with the police before travelling, and our route plan included the coast. So we resigned ourselves to this turn.

Before departure there was a lot more Arabic than usual being exchanged by our guide and driver. This made me suspicious, and secretly hopeful, and it turned out they were negotiating with home base to change our route plan. They succeeded. We were going through the desert.

The road was straight, in pretty good shape, and with minimal traffic. With conditions like that we were screaming through the desert like three super-powered rockets. Initially there was about 50kms of sparse scrubby landscape, but suddenly that changed into flat, featureless stony desert. Incredibly every now and then you’d see a herd of camels. There was nothing apparent to eat, but they were just standing around like it was the most natural thing in the world. I have new-found respect for the beasts. We stopped for tea at what has been dubbed the most isolated shack in existence about 120kms in. It was quite a homely place, the hostess seemed delighted to see us, was quite enthusiastic in testing out her limited English, and made us some very sweet tea. We were soaking in the isolation as the wind starting picking up. Back in the saddle, we were making good time. To add to the excitement, the sand dunes that were often lining the road occasionally stretched all the way across. As we have learnt from hard experience our bikes do not deal at all well with sand, the front tire just sort of slipping around in a very alarming and crashable way. So the dunes were concerning. Where the cars travelled there were gaps in the sand car-tire-widths wide so we aimed for those, and were mostly successful. Once though I missed, and shot over a little dune at some fast speed. It seemed ok.

For lunch we stopped at the halfway house, a cafe and refuelling point that was positioned exactly halfway along the road. It felt like the back of beyond, everything was in port-a-camps, including the petrol bowsers. We had a suspicious curry beef sandwich and the worse non-alcoholic beer I’ve ever tasted. Outside the wind was picking up. Our guide asked us if the bikes are ok in wind and we said sure, it just makes handling a little difficult. Looking outside at the world disappearing in a dust haze, with the door to the cafe getting continually pushed open by the gusting dust swirls, I hesitated in saying that the bikes should be able to handle the wind. I guess it depended on how strong it got.

The next stretch was something else. The wind was getting very strong, and I would say we were basically in a sandstorm. For about 100kms the visibility varied from 100m to around 40. Occasionally we could see very little except the guide’s car in front, the sides of the road disappearing into a blanket sandy haze. Huge arcs of sand coursed across the road, and through all this we travelled far too quickly. The sand got into the visor and into my eyes and nose. Nothing you could do about it of course, I can’t imagine what it would be like opening your visor to rub your eyes at 130kph in a sandstorm but I wouldn’t see it ending well. It was, well, great.

Eventually we got to the cleansing sea breezes of the Mediterranean, and the dust receded. It took me about 20km to realize that the dust haze I was seeing was actually just on my visor rather than the world around me, so, rubbing that off I saw the crystal blue skies above the plains heading in to Tobruk. We had made it across the desert and almost all the way across Libya. We followed this with a quiet night in watching satellite TV and eating extremely fresh bread we picked up, along with a bunch of other Libyans, from a late-night bakery straight out of the oven. I slept well.