Tag: Camels

Coming into town all we saw was a cluster of low-lying buildings with solar panels on the roofs for power. The half-dozen streetlights in town were also solar powered. We pulled up and tried to figure out where things were. There wasn’t much of anything in town aside from one little store. We circled around, going back toward the tarmac to see if there was any indication of which direction we should go. Instead, we got stuck in the sand. At this point I noticed the only other car in town, a broken down 1950’s vintage Renault station wagon that was the mere carcass of an automobile. It had been thoroughly sandblasted. Through some ingenuity on my part, we gathered a bunch of discarded date palm stalks and managed to build a rudimentary sand ladder to get out of the sand. With only three of us pushing while Marie drove, there was no way we were getting it out of there without the help of the date stalks. We managed to get out of the sand and back to hard ground.

I pulled out my binoculars and looked around to see what I could see. I saw the oasis about a kilometer beyond the outpost of buildings that we had gotten stuck next to. We decided we’d head over that way and look for a hotel or something to get some food at. We pulled up on some hard ground, seeing tons of sand blocking our progression any further into the oasis. There was a nice road just beyond this particular sand drift that went through the middle of the oasis but we weren’t too comfortable about getting stuck in the middle of it. We left the car there and walked around the oasis looking for any signs of habitation. Finally, we ran into two local guys wearing camel rider outfits who were walking through the palmerie. We talked to them a bit and they told us that they could help us get through the sand. Back over at the car, we encountered another vehicle, a pickup truck, that told us how to drive through it without getting stuck. Marie decided to give it a try, knowing that the two camel drivers would help us get unstuck for a price. Marie gunned it and made it through the sand with impressive grace. On the other side we cheered her, talked with the one camel driver still left, and then continued on to the hotels near the source of the oasis water. The camel driver said that if we wanted camel rides that he’d do it for us for 10 dinars an hour if we showed up near the source at a specific time and waited for him to come over. He said that the boss of the camels would quote us 15 but he’d do it for 10 if we didn’t let anyone else know about the deal. We said we’d think about it.

We came to the encampment of hotels. Three in total next to the source. One was a five star luxury hotel complete with swimming pool, air conditioned tents complete with bathrooms, and an amazing view off of a watch tower constructed on the grounds. The other two were more modest tent affairs. We chose the first one we came to as the place was nice, the price was right, 25 dinars per person for full board, and the people were friendly. We moved into our tent, had an amazing couscous lunch complete with several types of meat and tea, and then walked over to the source to meet our camel driver.

He was at the source sitting with a few other Tunisian dudes in the shadows of one of the cafes. We nodded to him and went over to sit at another table a ways away to see if he’d come over. After about ten minutes, he didn’t come over so we left. We decided that he must not have wanted the business for some reason such as maybe his boss was there or whatever because he never got up and walked over. Too bad because it would have been fun to ride a camel.