Between the Desert and the Deep Blue Sea
After four days in Cairo and a fleeting visit to the pyramids where we failed to penetrate the throng of touts, faux-guides and camel pedlars holding our truck under siege, we turned towards the Red Sea. The green Nile valley and dense fields of sugar cane changed abruptly into barren desert.
We erected our camp in the cover of the hills. When darkness fell, it cooled rapidly, it had been no warmer than 25 °C all day. And it was windy – very different from what I had imagined the desert to be like. Then again, it was mid-winter.
Finally all the tents were up, the table was set and we were sitting down to our dinner of spaghetti and goulash by candellight. Our first meal in the desert.
We told stories until late into the night. When the moon was high in the sky I crept into my sleeping back. In spite of possible encounters with scorpions or snakes, I had decided to stay in the open. After a short dreamless sleep I was awoken by the creeping cold. The thin layer of clouds had gone, leaving the sky covered in thousands of stars. To the southeast, Orion stood out in a sea of glowing dots. Two meteorites swished across a sky more spectacular than I had ever seen. I wished for health and a long life for all of us and went back to sleep.
The desert was changing. There were more stones and barely a dried-out shrub among the rocks, and there were more hills. Behind one chain of hills we entered a small valley covered with glaring white sand with a great big acacia growing right in the middle of it. It shot straight up from the barren sand, spreading its branches like a mushroom cloud. A smooth brown trunk topped by a canopy as lush as in an English park. From close by the leaves might be small and leathery among thorny branches, but seen from afar it was incredible. There was not a stalk of grass anywhere in the vicinity.
Soon the patches of sand gave way to ground covered entirely in rocks and boulders. Bizzare rock formations were hanging over the road. Giant boulders balanced precariously on the point of steep slopes. It looked as if the slightest whisper of a breeze might send them thundering onto the ground. A few were marked with arabic writing. Someone joked it probably said “beware of landslides!” A smaller such avalanche had closed the road ahead.
Siggi revved the engine of our all-terain truck, there was an almighty rattle and I clung to the waterbarrels which threatened to topple over as we mounted the obstacle, then we were across. This was merely the first little challenge our lorry would have to face on this trip.
Around a wide bend we got a view of a sandy expanse with a blue stripe on the horizon. The Red Sea. The desert extended directly into the beach. Where the moisture came close to the surface there were small shrubs which seemed to excrete salt like a layer of frost and others with thick leathery leaves storing any bit of moisture.
I had never been to a tropical sea but the reality met all my expectations, it was fantastic. Coral fragments and shells covered the white sand like pebbles. The pale blue water washed over a shallow plateau about a hundred metres long where giant mussles gaped to expose their mantles, gleaming a velvety electric blue. Urchins festooned with long black spines protruded from the crevices. At the end of the plateau the water darkened suddenly. A reef dropped down to a depth of about twenty metres. There were fish of all colours and sizes.
I was scared when I first looked into the deep. I turned back but returned soon after with a pair of bright orange fins which, it would seem, I had not dragged across the desert in vain. Once more, I glided from the lip of the plateau into the blue.
The wall of the reef was covered with corals of any imaginable shape: delicately twiggy, branching miniature trees, bony and the flat hemispheres of brain coral. A small lionfish was hiding in its shelter – bizzare and beautiful, but poisonous. The silhouettes of larger fish occasionally flashed in the deep beyond. There would be sharks. Udo claimed he saw a small one but I did not spot any. Instead, a giant murray eel shot out of its hole just as Uschi swam innocently overhead. I never noticed the thing but I got to listen to the widely exaggerated tales over lunch.
Over the following three days we lived a Robinson lifestyle among corals and shells but the idyll was disrupted by patches of viscous black tar washed up on the beach. Siggi said that after a spot of snorkeling he looked the same as after working on the truck for an hour.
Neither did we remain undisturbed. According to Reinhold and Siggi, we were in a millitary area and would face problems if we should be discovered. Udo and I were strolling along the beach to look for a good snorkeling spot when we spotted a soldier on a camel in the distance. He spotted us as well and spurned the camel towards us. I speeded up, looking for a rock to seek cover. I was only wearing a skimpy swimsuit. The soldier jumped down, called out to us and waved, then ran and hopped across the bolders towards us. Udo slowed down.
“Go on,” I hissed: “Hurry! Any moment now he is going to ask for our papers and we’ll be in the shit!”
The soldier had returned to collect his camel and now stood next to us. He did not speak a word of English but grinned broadly and bade the camel to kneel. Then he waved us over and indicated the saddle. Udo clambered up, the camel rose and swayed along behind its master. Then it was my turn. I closed my gaping mouth.
I had always wanted to ride a camel and now would be my opportunity. I approached the beast with trepidation. It opened its mouth wide, revealing teeth that looked similar to that of a hippo. Smaller, true, but probably considerably sharper. I never thought a camel could have teeth like that. To allow for a better inspection, the camel wrinkled its upper lip and bared its incisors. Little remained of the placid expression usually associated with dromedaries. As soon as I stepped closer, it started to emit a low gargling growl that rolled up its throat from somewhere deep inside.
“No thanks!” I said, waving my palms rapidly.
“Don’t be chicken,” Udo scolded quietly.
Before I knew better, I had climbed into the saddle grabbing the knob with all my might. There was a push from front, then from behind, then the ground was two metres below me. The recalcitrant camel reluctantly started to sway along and I realised that another reason why it is called the “ship of the desert” is that you can easily get seasick when riding one. A short time later, its master got it to kneel once again which it was no more inclined to do than to rise in the first place. When I least expected it, the animal suddenly folded under me, causing my stomach to lurch and the world to hang sideways. Irritated at the shifting weight, it started to rise again but when the master gave a decisive command it collapsed all the way. Just as I was about to fall off, it was kneeling. I dismounted, gingerly keeping away from its bared teeth. Its master jumped up, simply grabbing it by the nostrils as it pointed its angry mouth towards him. After waving cheerfully to us, he trotted away on his protesting beast.
(Sure, this was an indication of dodgy camel husbandy, but what did I know then?)
As it started to get dark, a military jeep pulled up next to our camp and two officers got out asking for our leader. They demanded to see our papers and settled down to scrutinise them in the light of a petroleum lamp. Cursing I dug out my moneybelt and took out the passport, making sure not to lose anything in the process: cash, tickets, insurance documents, vaccination booklet, and making doubly sure to check it wasn’t the second passport with the South Africa Visa in it. Norbert had been less careful and handed over the wrong passport. Thankfully he had not yet obtained his visa for South Africa, but confusion ensued when the officials could not find his Egyptian stamps, or any others for that matter. We were worried he might be arrested, but after inspecting the lorry and its contents for a while, the officers seemed satisfied. They even apologized for the inconvenience: “Please understand. Foreigners in a military area… -Welcome to Egypt!”
A stiff westerly blew all night, penetrating my sleeping bag and clothes. At two in the morning I finally crept out to find a sheltered spot where I instead got covered with a layer of fine dusty sand. I did not get much sleep until the stars paled in the pre-dawn sky only to be awoken minutes later by an atrocious racket as if sitting right next to a loudspeaker on a mosque during the call to prayer. No sooner had the noise died down that it erupted again. This time it sounded like Tarzan in the jungle, but considerably louder. I might have known. Reinhold stood on the beach hollering his primeal scream which he had refined to signal his mates on a rafting expedition in the Yukon some years previously. It was six and time to get up. We had several hundred kilometres ahead of us before we would reach Asswan.
Tags: Cairo to Capetown, Tag Index
Denni