The Thing About Camel Trekking ...

All saddled up and nowhere to go. Well, no where in particular. Leaving from the town of Chinguetti in Mauritania, we commence our three day Saharan camel trek. Prepared for heat, thirst and plenty of walking, but there was something we could not have prepared for; something crazy.

Dunes stretching into the horizon, each day we walked in the morning beside our two camels, stopping before the heat of the day to rest under the shade of a thorn bush, for at least 5 hours. Our very quiet guide, Solimann cooked us a lunch feast of rice and veggies, eerily similar to our dinner meal of pasta and veggies, no complaints though. And every morning we woke up to a breakfast of bread cooked buried in the sand under coals from the night's fire.

Most of each day's walking was through an ocean of picturesque golden sand dunes, and wadis. Each night we bunked down in the desert expecting a glorious apparition of innumerable stars. Here is where things get weird. After a normal weather day on the first day and night, as we settled down for the second night we both felt something falling on our faces. Something wet. We assumed at first that each of us independently had become spitty talkers, but the reality was far more shocking. As our sleeping blankets and mats became increasingly soggy, we realize what it was. Rain!! In the desert! In the Sahara desert, the big one!! It pourned off and on all night, and we woke up damp to a beautiful sunrise. Weird.

The thing about camel trekking is, apparently sometimes you get soaked in the desert. Who would have thought?