Chapter 4 – Still in the desert

 

Let’s talk about the desert winds. These things are something fierce.  We spent 3.5 days in the desert.  The wind blew almost nonstop and seriously picked up steam on day 2.  It was blowing around 30-40 mph – no joke.  At couple times, I was almost blown over.  One night we tried to watch the sunset from atop a rock outcropping in Toezur and I was literally almost blown over.  The trees out on the edge of the oases (where they are most exposed) literally lean at a 35 degree angle because the winds have shoved them over. 

The  winds had another great effect for us.  As we travelled across the desert from Tozeur we drove through a sandstorm!  It was wild. The wind was blowing basically nonstop and the sand was just streaming across the road.  The car was pretty stable, something I had potentially been concerned about, as I kept to a reasonable speed.  Rachel was a  trooper and hanging in there – ok she feel asleep but that does constitute hanging in there.  I’m pretty sure she was thinking in her mind, “how did the Australian State department rate this a 2?”  (as many of you know, Rachel and I have a longstanding understanding. We can go to the more adventurous places just so long as the Aussies say it’s no more than a 2 on their 5 point risk scale.  This causes no amount of angst as I try to bargain for certain countries and she retorts, “but the Aussies say it’s a  3 – it’s not safe”).

So anyway, we’re out on the desert road, driving through a sandstorm and Rachel’s sleeping.  Did I mention that it was raining too?  Yup, that’s right.  We’re on the edge of the Sahara desert. One of the driest places on earth.  It’s may (i.e., not winter when it might rain).  The sun had been blistering down on us for the past couple of days, but this day, it was raining.  It felt a bit biblical to be honest.  Sandstorm, rain, howling winds – the frogs and locust. Ok there were no frogs or locust but a grasshopper did land on my shirt the night before while we were buying dates.  That must count for some kind of divine intervention.

Ah the dates.  The wonderful dates.  They give meaning and major commerce to these oases towns.  All of the palm trees are date palms and they do many things for the locals (wood, fronds for the roofs, etc)  but primarily they provide dates.  Dates were so valuable in ancient times that you could sell one slave for 150 pounds of dates. Come to think of it, I’m not sure if that actually makes the dates valuable or the slaves cheap.  Nevertheless, dates are the thing here. 

One of the reasons, beyond their general yumminess, is their usefulness in the desert.  They last a long time (up to a year) without any special refrigeration.   They have a significant amount of calories and other essential vitamins.  Apparently, you can live on nothing but dates for several days (like if you were crossing the desert in a camel caravan). And the camels like to munch on the pits.  So to make our desert crossings more authentic (since we had no camel and had air conditioning) we munched on dates.  It was not only delicious and nutritious (they actually constituted lunch a couple of days) but it was fun too.  Munching on dates, spitting pits out the window (don’t worry environmentalists, they biodegrade or camels eat them, or they bloom into trees – we’re doing what nature intended that way – conveying the seed of the tree to be planted elsewhere).  Lots of fun

But I’ve gotten pulled way off track with just a digression on desert winds.   Let’s got back and talk about Tozeur.  Charming desert oasis.  Their palmerie (palm tree forest/farm) is the second largest in Tunisia outside of Douz with over 200K palm trees.  We took a nice stroll through the palmerie which does a wonderful job at shading the sun and making for a comfortable promenade.   It was quite lovely except for two things.  First, there was quite a lot of garbage.  I guess the locals don’t believe in composting let alone collecting garbage in heaps.  Perhaps they’ve taken the spitting date pits out a bit too far and forgetting that plastic bags do not reproduce that way.  Anyway, it was a bit sad.  The other slightly depressing part is that the land is all farmed by sharecroppers.  As is the usual plight of sharecroppers, they are captives of their landlords and are, in essence, indentured servants with not fixed servitude.  Or put it another way – their serfs.  Puts life in perspective. When we think we’ve got it bad, at least we don’t have feudal overlords keeping us down – just republicans!

Tozeur’s old town is probably the smallest, and by far the most charming, of all the medina’s in Tunisia (that we’ve seen at least).  All of the buildings are made with special bricks made from local sand and sun dried and then baked.  They are a yellow color and apparently are very good for insulation (keeps the buildings cool in summer and warm in winter).  The distinctive color and patterns of the bricks certainly made this part of town distinctive.  Many of the houses also are made from palm tree wood which has a unique flair to it as well.  Beyond just strolling the streets, which was fun, we ended up having tea on a rooftop converted into a traditional Berber tent. It wasn’t really a Berber tent, but it was set up that way.  Out on the terrace, they have a tarp and some rugs with pillows surrounded by assorted Berber items (samovars, etc).  It was a delightful experience to sip tea and nosh on local cookies while staring out at the green of the palmerie and the roofs of the old town.

On an excursion from Tozeur we drove out to Chebika – another oasis close to the Algerian border (don’t worry we didn’t go to Algeria – it is definitely not a 2 on the aussie list!)  The drive goes through the desert and across one of the Chotts, or salt lakes, that exist in the Tunisian desert.  The road was as flat as can be with nothing but scrub brush for much of the way.  As the chott came into view, it was the classic desert mirage.  The heat rising off the salt glimmers in the sun and looks like water.  Because of the extreme flatness, our vision loses perspective too, and the scrub brush in the distance looks like palm trees waving.  It creates the illusion of a cool oasis waiting just at the horizon.  Of course, you never reach that oasis as the horizon just extends (or the salt lake ends).  It must be horrifying to be walking out in the desert to be so fooled. The environment is punishing.  We were driving on a day with some cloud cover so it wasn’t as hot as it could be and it was still in the 90’s.  To be out, alone, caravanning through the desert and to be so fooled is a fate not to be wished upon even our worst enemies (see bad karma above).

At the foot of the mountains is Chebika.  It’s a nothing town that had been abandoned except for the fact that it has a spring and waterfall that now draws tourists.  Fortunately, we got there mostly before the tour groups and had the place to ourselves for a while.  The waterfall was small but cooling and the little pool formed by the spring was lush.  There were even little frogs lazing about (ok probably not lazing but it did look that way).   It was an oasis in the truest sense.  A little valley of water from which there was green on each side and that was it – the rest desert.  I took a little swim – mostly for the novelty of dunking oneself in cool fresh water in the middle of the desert.  The view from the foothills out onto the desert and the chott was awe inspiring as well.  Why people would choose to live in the desert is still beyond me.  There are so many other more hospitable places. This does not seem to be a place worth livening in – but I’m sure some people say the same place about NYC.

The desert did take one casualty that day – my digital camera.  Suddenly, it just stopped working (ok we dropped it but only about 3 feet and it wasn’t a harsh fall).  Anyway, it’s quite disappointing and I was left with my camera phone an disposable film cameras (yes they still exist thankfully). Now everything needs to be judged carefully – is this really photo worthy?  Will it come out?  Should I waste a precious resource?  Think Elaine on Seinfeld – sponge worthy?