Dakhla is lovely! Right on a peninsula, gorgeous boulevards and cafes, lots of scrummy seafood restaurants and a hotel where everything works. We have spent the day watching kite surfers and walking up more sand dunes, having a long dinner on the seafront and coming back for a snooze. I met a lady in the lift who said she was cold this morning, so I ran back to my room to lend her Sonja's present. It's now back with a lovely note, her phone number and card for ...

There is a very fat German man in our group of 5, very annoying. He has a huge belly as tight as a drum which he likes to get out every now and again for a spot of sun. He is very loud so you can easily locate him - I can be busy contemplating a pretty stone when there will be a huge long fart to my left. We aren't really supposed to go 1 km off the tracks ( which are pretty invisible) because that's the distance the mines have been cleared. We are travelling ea...

One advantage of being menopausal, fat and 56 is that no-one takes any notice of you now. So it was that last night saw me confidently striding out of the hotel with no map, no street name and the wrong hotel name in my head. I ended up on the Boulevard next to the beach with no one around except groups of lads and some children kicking an old shoe around. There don't seem to be any women around here, least of all one wandering around with a Moomin t-shirt on. It...

It's been a very stressful chicken day today. After saying I ate anything but chicken, I immediately thought, oh crap, I shouldn't have said that. So dinner was camel. I was also taken to the local animal market with chickens everywhere - tied up, in tiny cages, upside down. I spent the whole time staring down at Ali's crotch to save myself looking at traumatic chicken scenes rolling out before me. We have driven down the coast today, through little fishing vill...