Around the World in 50 Years

by Albert Podell

  Steve plunged in first—and screamed for us to stop. The water was alive with leeches—wriggling, slimy, segmented worms as long as my foot—thousands of hungry black bloodsuckers. We ran out immediately, but Steve was in too far. By the time he made it back to shore there were two hot dog–sized wrigglers clinging to his legs and another, big as a sausage, sucking blood from his back. I pulled them off and cleansed his wounds. We retreated to the camper, utterly dejected.

  Later that night, we sat around our dismal campsite getting ready for the next long stretch, to Cairo. Steve was studying maps, I was selecting photos for the sponsors, Woodrow was adding up his expenses, and the nurses were packing their knapsacks. Miles across the bay, the lights of Algiers beamed steady in the clear air, but everywhere else around us was absolute darkness, broken only by the glow of our hissing gas lanterns.

  Suddenly Woodrow jumped up, screaming and holding his neck. Something had bitten him hard, and blood was oozing from the wound. But what? What kind of creature could slash a person’s neck on a North African beach without being seen?

  As I bandaged Woodrow’s wound, I heard a faint warning buzz about ten yards away, like a rattlesnake, but lower in pitch. I turned toward the sound and saw a blur of black leap from the beach at my head. It caromed off the gas lantern and vanished. It was terrifying. We’d later be confronted by elephants in heat and tarantulas in our trousers, but we had no idea what demonic creature was attacking us now, and there’s nothing more frightening than the unknown.

  We waited, tense and sweating: two minutes, five, ten. Then another black buzz jumped at us. It grazed Steve on the chest and he swatted it to the beach and pinned it with his boot. It was one of the most hideous creatures I’ve ever seen, more a monster than any child of Nature. It was about five inches across, dark chocolate brown, with prominent front pincers and several sets of smaller side legs. It had the general shape of a crab, the hairy appearance of a spider, and some sort of rear wings that enabled it to fly or spring up to five feet high and 20 feet forward. And it died hard: Steve smashed the one at his foot ten times with an entrenching tool before it was finally stilled.

  Our flashlights exposed a seething army of these things crawling toward us, but not before one of them sprung at me and nipped my hand. They were attracted to light, so we extinguished our lanterns and sat in the dark until we drowsed into nightmares of minefields and leeches and flying monsters.

  The next morning brought no relief, for with it came mobs of unwashed, unruly kids, all curious to see the foreigners who were living on the beach, and all with a touch of larceny in their little hearts. What with two cars and trailers loaded with gear, we were thankful, when we took inventory that evening, that we’d lost only a can opener and a stack of paper plates.

  We also lost the nurses that day, though not to looters: They were due back at their hospitals in London. We were sad as we watched their steamer sail for Marseilles. Ours was hardly a trip for the frail, and those Kiwis had borne up splendidly. Where others would have complained about the sun, the sand, the bugs, the food, and the flying crabs, Barbara, Mira, and Liz seldom lost their high spirits or good humor, a credit to their country and their calling.

  Sometime during that night, as we slept, our camp had an uninvited visitor who cut the tarp on the small storage trailer and stole a suitcase loaded with winter clothing, mountain-climbing gear, and spare photographic equipment. We reported the theft to the police, who turned it over to the army, which was less interested in catching the thieves than in learning what a bunch of foreigners were doing camped on a beach with ropes and crampons and telephoto lenses. We were released only after hours of interrogation.

  Given the aggressive wildlife, the thieving visitors, and the antagonistic political atmosphere, none of us wanted to remain in Algiers, but we had to stay: Cracks in the camper needed welding and the Jeep’s generator had burned out and required rewiring. We had difficulty finding someone competent to do this work because almost every skilled auto mechanic and machinist had either fled back to France or been killed during the war, which had claimed 130,000 lives and exiled a million. After hours of searching, we found a welding shop for the camper and a technician who rewired our generator—and warned us that a revolution was imminent.

  Though we doubted the thieves would return, we knew it was possible. So as not to be caught unaware, we stuck forked twigs in the sand in a circle around the cars and storage trailer, then ran a piece of string through them to a can half-filled with small stones balanced on a twig in a hole under the camper beside which Steve and I unrolled our sleeping bags. If anybody approached our equipment, they’d trip the string and rattle the can enough to wake us. In theory.

  It was black and cramped under the camper, and I was sure the biting monsters would find us, but we managed to fall asleep. Hours later I heard something, but it wasn’t the can rattling: It was someone unzipping the windows of the Land Cruiser. Steve was also awake, and handed me our .38 revolver. We slipped out from under the camper and got into position.

  Steve flicked on our big flashlight. It caught three mean-looking men, their arms full of our supplies. I shouted at them to drop the stuff.

  One of them did, but all three ran into the dark. We gave chase. I warned them to stop or I’d shoot. But they kept running. I fired twice into the air, but they kept going with our gear. I then fired at them, trying to hit their legs, though it was difficult to see in the moonless dark. On the third shot, I heard a groan and thought I saw someone fall. We rushed to the spot and found, next to a flying crab, Steve’s safari hat, our binoculars, and some of our clothing. Our flashlight showed three sets of tracks moving up the beach, the one in the middle dragging, and here and there a spot of what looked like blood.

  Had I killed somebody? Or just wounded him? How badly? Would he be back with a gang to get us? If he died, would his family or friends report us to the police?

  We couldn’t go to the police ourselves: They were already suspicious and unfriendly and not likely to treat kindly an American who’d shot an Algerian, whatever the provocation. Moreover, we’d averred at the border that we carried no firearms, knowing that if we declared our gun they’d confiscate it. The possession of that undeclared pistol alone could put us in jail, and that was the last place we wanted to be with an impending coup. We decided to clear out then and there.

  If the burglar died or reported us, we assumed the police would look for us along the coastal highway east to Tunis, the best and most commonly traveled way out of the country, but one on which we knew Algerian troops had been stationed because of Ben Bella’s dispute with neighboring Tunisia. We decided to avoid it by heading south, into the Sahara, where we were reasonably sure nobody would be looking for us. But we were not reasonably sure how to get through it.

  When we’d inquired about traveling through the Sahara at gas stations the day before, nobody knew if it was currently negotiable, or what shape the roads were in, or even if there were roads. Our map indicated only thin unpaved tracks, ominous gray veins designated as “terrible,” and only one of which led into Tunisia. It was noted as subject to frequent closure by sandstorms, which meant we’d be forced to circle back through 800 miles of desert and mountains to link up with the World War II road through northern Algeria, by which time we’d be out of gas and the uprising we’d been warned about could be underway.

  We broke camp and were on the move before dawn. Sunrise found us climbing through the Atlas Mountains, the natural barrier that protects the flourishing Mediterranean strip of North Africa from the encroachment of the great sea of sand, heading south toward the Sahara, into what the Arabs call “the land of a thousand horrors,” the world’s hottest and largest sand desert, 9.4 million square miles, larger than the continental U.S., stretching from the Red Sea to the Atlantic.

  Hollywood had taught me to think of the Sahara as an immense waste of worthless, endless sand dunes, unbearably hot by day and freezing cold at night, without rainfall or
water, except on a few oases, which I visualized as inviting blue ponds surrounded by beautiful gardens in the midst of an eternal desert whose life was unchanged and unchanging. These misconceptions were dispelled within two days after I met her: The only aspect of my Sahara vision that proved to be valid was “immense.”

  The flowing Panavision dunes of the movies comprise only 15 percent of the Sahara, concentrated in two or three areas. Most of the Sahara that we saw was an arid steppe, a low hard-packed plateau of gravel, sand, rocks, and some scrub grass. The rest is remarkably varied: It has massive mountains, high plateaus, volcanic formations, dried river beds, shadowy valleys, depressed salt basins, wind-eroded hills, and sparse plain. And it was far from worthless: Oil, gas, coal, iron, copper, gold, tin, tungsten, and manganese had recently been found there and were being exploited.

  We did not find the daytime desert unbearably hot. Though the temperature went over 90 before noon and kept climbing, the heat was by no means intolerable, because the air was so devoid of moisture and in such constant motion that our perspiration evaporated instantly, keeping us cool and dry. We did require salt pills and a constant intake of water, and we had to avoid heavy foods, but as long as we stuck to this regimen, the Sahara was not unpleasant. It did cool quickly once the sun went down. With a cloudless sky overhead, the sand rapidly lost its heat, and there were no large bodies of water near enough to moderate the temperature shift, but it never dropped below 45 degrees.

  We also learned that the Sahara had ample water, if you knew where to look, and received rain during winter, with some parts getting four inches—hardly enough to sustain agriculture, but sufficient to enable dormant seeds to germinate, dotting the desert with patches of green and bursts of bloom. The Sahara has no conventional lakes or rivers; They couldn’t survive because the hot dry air can evaporate surface water to a depth of 13 feet in a year.

  But below the surface there’s another world. Fed by millennia of runoff from the Atlas Mountains and underground streams trapped in layers of cretaceous mantle rock, the realm beneath the sand is awash with sufficient water for centuries, if not tapped and drawn down profligately. Some aquifers rose to the surface centuries ago, as springs and pools, to create the oases, but most of the waters lay unknown and unused until around 1950, when geologists discovered and tapped them forth. Along our route south, the water table was so close to the surface that we found functioning wells whose water was less than 50 feet down. Though we were never sure of the rules and customs, the wells seemed to be open to any thirsty traveler, with a pulley and a goatskin container or bucket ready and waiting, never any fences or NO TRESPASSING signs.

  Because we all drank heartily—every other hour draining our personal quart-size thermos bottles and the pair of two-gallon jugs we shared—we found it necessary to stop every 30 miles or so to fill up, yet never lacked for a waiting well. Farther south, in the heart of the desert, the wells were fewer and deeper, but adequate for us. Surveys made a few years earlier had concluded that all the wells, springs, and irrigation ditches in the entire Sahara were consuming its water at one fourth the rate it flowed in. But that balance has been upset in recent years, and lives will be endangered if conservation does not become a priority.

  Even more at odds with my idealized view of the Sahara were the oases, which I’d envisioned as photogenic pools surrounded by luxurious gardens. From the distance they seemed to live up to my belief. Through the clear desert air we could see the brilliant green tops of the palm trees. But as we drew closer the vision faded. Little was green at eye level: only brown tree trunks and brownish-red mud and rocks, and ugly houses with barbed wire around struggling gardens.

  At the oases, water was highly prized and closely guarded. It ran from heavily fenced-in springs, along dirty canals that bordered the streets, into portions of private land dammed with rocks and rotting boards and protected by rusting wire. The houses were of weathered mud or yellowish clay, a few touched up with whitewash. Everything wore a brown coat of dust or sand from the encroaching desert and the ceaseless wind.

  The bleakness was little relieved by the gardens, often a tangle of weeds or rodent-gnawed vegetables, inefficiently small after being passed on for generations, divided among brothers, split and split again, until they were no more than three feet by five, even the largest seldom more than 60 square feet.

  Many younger inhabitants refuse to accept this way of life as the will of Allah. In contact with visiting Europeans, hearing about the wonders of modern science and industry, able to catch a truck ride and leave the desert in a few days, hundreds of young men had been heading for the coastal cities to find a better life, leaving the old people behind to tend the dying gardens and crumbling houses.

  The other upholders of the old way of life, the nomads, were also undergoing a major transformation and may become people of the past, because the mid-century arrival of the truck diminished the size and importance of their caravan trade, as did the depletion of the desert gold deposits, the mining of cheap salt in Europe, and the decline of the ostrich-feather trade. The French colonizers struck two additional blows when they abolished the lucrative slave trade and the feudal dues paid to the nomads by the oasis dwellers. The nomads then switched to stockbreeding as a source of income, but the decline of the caravans decreased the market for camels, and droughts devastated their sheep herds.

  The powerful nomad tribes were beginning to break up. Many were abandoning their obsolescent traditions, settling in oases, buying some date palms and cereal seeds, venturing into the formerly shunned occupation of agriculture—rooted peasants rather than proud, free wanderers. They’d been compelled to join the revolution that we saw coming to the Sahara, which was just beginning to be drilled by oil rigs, crossed by improved roads, bisected by pipelines, straddled by air strips, carved by mines, and sucked by gushing water pumps. This would bring drastic, and not always desirable, changes to the Sahara in the decades ahead, and I felt fortunate that I first saw her while she was still awesome and proud and not yet conquered.

  After driving four days, we reached easternmost Tébessa Province. We were far enough south of the Aurès Mountains to make a run for Tunisia, hoping we could get through, despite the lack of reliable recent road maps. Those provided by the national tourist ministries were frequently misleading, generally glossy and colorful and filled with the thick reds and blues of well-paved roads more for artistic effect than cartographic accuracy, often indicating superhighways where camel trails could barely be discerned.

  It was impossible to learn much about distant road conditions from the locals, few of whom had ever been more than 50 miles from their mud doorsteps. Some were fatalistic and untraveled, and told us that our road ended just beyond their oasis and that we could not move farther without a camel. Others were eager to please and reluctant to give offense, invariably telling us to continue in the direction we were heading, lest it be thought they were calling attention to our error. By far the most common, however, were those who didn’t understand a word of what we were asking.

  We turned northeast at El Oued, the easternmost of Algeria’s large oasis towns, set amid dunes over 400 feet high whose lines differed from every angle but were always graceful. They were as picturesque as the Panavision version, and we found ourselves watching expectantly for a dashing warrior in a turban and flowing white robe to come charging over one of the dunes waving a scimitar, his powerful white Arabian stallion raising a plume of golden sand. But the only warriors who came were voracious flies.

  As an homage to the Great Desert, then in its last days of untamed glory, we stopped our vehicles, and Manu and Steve and I raced to the tops of these golden hills, tumbling and sliding down, laughing and playing, making tracks where there were no tracks, thrilled by their vast unsullied magnificence.

  But the minute we rested, the flies set upon us, vicious, biting bugs, twice as large as America’s largest horsefly. Their presence amid these barren dunes, miles from any visible food
or breeding spots, miles from any camels—to them a traveling amusement park and lunch wagon combined—was a puzzle to us, as surprising as the flying crabs. Where did they come from? What did they eat when we weren’t around? How did they survive in the middle of nowhere? From the relentlessness of their attacks, we must have been the first food they’d seen in months. Fortunately, they departed when the sun set, but they were back by daybreak, an irritating alarm clock with no snooze button.

  Their absence after dusk permits the Sahara traveler to relax and enjoy its sunset, one of nature’s most dramatic spectacles. Because clouds rarely form above the desert, and moisture seldom enters its air to diffuse or refract, the sun descends as a blazing, hard-edged, crimson orb. In but a few minutes the dunes lose their dazzling glare and turn to soft colors, their lines muted, ever more graceful, as long shadows of purple, like pools of cool water, replace the bright harshness of day. The night comes quickly, and its stars are startling in their number and stunning in their brilliance. There is no sound for a hundred miles save the murmur of the cooling sands, no human save you, and I found myself wishing that the Sahara, however it may change, would never lose this magic.

  The road from El Oued toward Tunisia was neither as bad as we’d feared nor as good as we’d hoped. It was asphalt in sections, but badly potholed, and clogged with camels who refused to get out of our way. It was covered with sand for long stretches, making the going slow, slippery, and confusing. Loose-blown sand is a deadly enemy of the Sahara traveler. Rocks can puncture tires, potholes can crack springs, and mud will mire you down, but nothing is as vicious as the Sahara sand, which at one and the same time blinds your vision, obliterates your route, batters your equipment, and assaults you personally.

  The isolated Tunisian border post didn’t open until 8:00 a.m., so we explored around it and, to our delight, found a wide pipe gushing pure, cold water into a substantial concrete basin in which the cavalry’s camels were cavorting. We realized then that we hadn’t had a shower since the casbah in Algiers. The Sahara is so dry, and our sweat evaporated so quickly, that we could get by for several weeks without bathing, but there are limits, especially for those accustomed to daily dunks.