Sandstorm – Not Your Average Engineer

March 1, 2005November 15, 2021

Morning in the Oasis

The next morning Xiyun and I got up at about 530 to go out and watch the sun rise over the desert. It was still cloudy overhead but there wasn’t any evidence of a sandstorm underway. We thought that maybe we’d get lucky and see a good sunrise. We went out into the dunes a ways and settled in to watch it rise. By 7am it was obvious that no sun would rise that day so we headed back to the oasis. The sand was wet down about a half an inch but below that it was still powder-dry. Out to the west beyond the oasis it looked like the sand was still dry and it was definitely blowing. Before we reentered the oasis the sand already was almost dry. It was promising to be another sandstorm filled day. Back at the tent we found Marie and Maciej still sleeping in the tent. We roused them out of bed and went over to breakfast.

Just under the surface the sand was still dry as a bone.

The desert was starting to bloom from the rain.

Breakfast consisted of bread, margarine, jam, and coffee. It was decent but nothing to write home about. The bread was sandy, just like everything else in the oasis! After breakfast I headed over to the swank hotel with Marie to search out a telephone. She wanted to call her boyfriend in Morocco. She talks to him every night on the phone and texts several times a day. Ksar Ghilane obviously has zero portable service as it’s in the absolute middle of nowhere. There also aren’t any taxiphones. We found out that only the hotels have phones. The five star’s phone was down from the storm so Marie decided to head back over to our hotel to try and use their phone. I climbed up the tower at the nice hotel and took pictures looking out across the oasis toward the approaching sandstorm.

Our tent away from home.

Maciej and Xiyun climbed up the tower a while later and we took pictures of each other from the top. As I was taking pictures I saw the Italian film crew head out across the desert in their land rovers to a place about a kilometer out where they piled out and setup their equipment. Out across the desert came two horses, one being rode by a local man and the other by an Italian woman. No doubt she was some minor star in Italy and whatever they were shooting was some sort of love story. She had the white horse while the guy had a dark colored horse. It was all melodramatic. I decided I should check out what they were doing from a closer vantage point so I climbed down the tower and headed out into the desert to see what they were up to. I believe that I might now be in an Italian movie production or TV show of some sort!

Camel tracks.

Garbage in the sand.

Back in the oasis I went back to our tent to pack up my things. I found the other three waiting for me in the tent. They had decided that we’d strike out about an hour early and ditch our government friends. She had gotten some instructions from the hotel operator on another route that we could take rather than the pipeline road that would save us a lot of time. He said the road was a bit bumpier but would be okay for our car. We tore off down the tarmac out of Ksar Ghilane as the sandstorm swept over the oasis. It appeared that we were getting out of there at just the right time! It’s okay to be stuck in an oasis during a sand storm but it is absolutely no fun to be stuck out in the open in a broken-down car!

Just as we were getting into our car, a convoy of about 8 land rovers pulled up at the hotel with piles of tourists. The tourists all looked pretty shocked to see our Peugeot parked in amongst the land rovers. The rover drivers all looked pretty pissed! The day before we got the same response from the other land rovers that had been at the hotel for lunch and the ones that we had passed heading north toward Douz. In fact a few had tried to run us off the road but we didn’t give any ground and forced them to drive over some particularly crappy pieces of road as retribution. There’s a big interest in wanting to keep the mystique of Ksar Ghilane as an inaccessible place to all but land rovers and experienced guides. There we were in our Peugeot 206 ruining the mystique!

March 1, 2005November 15, 2021

Visiting the Roman Fort in a Sand Storm

After our abortive attempt to ride a camel, we gathered a few supplies including a bottle of water and headed out toward the sand dunes. We had heard the wind blowing through the tops of the trees in the oasis but we didn’t fully appreciate what that meant. Out of the shelter of the oasis we found a major sandstorm underway. The sky and the ground merged into one field of orange. The four of us went out a ways before the girls decided to turn back. Maciej and I decided to continue on toward where we thought we might spy the old roman fort out in the big sand dunes.

We got up to the top of a large sand dune and looked out into the sea of sand to what we thought might be a building far off in the distance. We weren’t sure though so we decided to head back and hope for better weather the next day. About 10 minutes into our march back to the oasis, now just a dark blur in a sea of swirling orange, and we spied the girls coming toward us on two ATV’s! They were riding in front of two Tunisian guys. They passed right past us not seeming to notice us and continued in the general direction of where we thought we had seen a building. We decided to follow after them.

Up on another hill, were we thought we had seen the fort, we finally saw the real fort as a square smudge on the horizon. Maciej and I headed off in the direction of the fort through the blinding sandstorm with only half a bottle of water. About 20 minutes into our new march, we both took off our shoes as they were weighing us down with sand and didn’t provide as good of a footing as being barefoot.

Just as we reached the fort, the girls pulled out on their ATV’s. They spied us coming up to the fort and pulled over to us. They hadn’t seen us before when they passed right by us and were amazed that we made it out there. They traded us our nearly empty bottle of water for a full one of theirs. We headed up to the fort as they took off into the sandstorm. This time the two Tunisian guys were driving to make better time back to the Oasis before the sandstorm got worse and also to give the girls a bit more of a thrill.

Maciej and I walked up to the fort and went inside. Originally this had been an outpost on the Limes defensive network created by the Romans to monitor the movement of the Berber tribes of the south. After the Romans left it was converted into a ksar, a fortified granary, by the locals of the oasis. It was used up until about 1960. Now it lies in a state of semi-ruin squarely on the “extreme” tourist route of Tunisia. We were the only two out there. We wandered around for a while before we decided it was time to head back. It was about an hour and a half before dark and we knew the crossing back to the oasis, now completely obscured by blowing sand, would not be easy or short.

On the way down from the fort we stopped in the cafe set up by some enterprising Tunisians to provide cool refreshing beverages for travelers coming to the Ksar. We went inside to check it out. The bar was fully stocked but everything had a couple of days coating of dust. No one was home at the time. We thought about drinking a few complimentary Fantas out of the fridge but decided we should strike out rather than look for a bottle opener.

The sandstorm had all but obscured all of the landmarks that we could use to get back to the oasis. It now was to the point where we could hardly separate sky from ground, sand from air, and for that matter we could hardly breathe through the stuff. I pulled out my handkerchief and used it as a dust mask. Maciej cupped his hand around his nose to keep some of the sand out. We struggled on into the wind, knowing that it was blowing from more or less the direction of the oasis. Finally after about 40 minutes of walking without knowing exactly where we were going we came over a particularly large sand dune and saw the oasis in the distance. As we descended down the dune the storm eased a little and we were able to proceed across the low dunes and into the oasis. It had been quite the trip across the dunes, leaving Maciej and I outside in the raging sandstorm for about four hours. Just after we got into the wonderful soothing confines of the oasis, we felt raindrops on our heads. Out in the sandstorm, all of the raindrops were sucked up by the sand but in the embrace of the palms we were able to feel the refreshing drops of rain. It was only a light sprinkle that lasted for a few minutes before it stopped, but it was the reason that the storm calmed down outside long enough for us to get a bearing on the oasis and find our way home. Rain can be helpful after all!

Back in the oasis we found the girls at a table outside the hotel’s main building finishing up a glass of tea. They told us their story of how they ended up riding with two Tunisian guys on ATV’s. As they started back to the oasis, they encountered a large group of middle-aged French guys on ATV’s being led by these two Tunisian guides. Two of the Frenchmen stopped and offered the girls a ride but as the girls were about to get on with these middle-aged Frenchmen who clearly were hoping for more, one of the Tunisian guys came up and told them that there was a strict one person per ATV limit. The Tunisian guy herded off the Frenchmen and told the girls (in Arabic) to wait there for a few minutes. A couple minutes later, once the herd of Frenchmen was underway again, he came back and told the girls to wait there for 20 minutes and he and his friend would be back and give them a ride out to the fort for free.

Sure enough, 20 minutes later the two Tunisians were back, put the girls in the drivers seats, sat behind the two of them, and the four tore off together across the sand dunes. It was just after this that they passed us without even seeing us. It was probably a good thing or else they might not have gotten the full ride to the fort. As it was, after they encountered us, the two Tunisian guys became a bit less fresh with the girls. Marrying foreign women is about the only way that the men of Ksar Ghilane can ever hope to escape the prison that is their oasis. It’s a rather depressing existence out in the sands.

Xiyun had some major sand in the bra!

February 28, 2005November 15, 2021

Walking Around the Oasis

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.