Thus 27 Mar 08

Day 26

Akakus Mountains - The Lakes

Km

The Guides have been doing some talking and are very concerned we aren't up to driving over the massive dunes to the lakes. The dunes around the lakes have been bothering me and Bruce so far has done a brilliant job driving in the sand, but we had hoped for a little more teaching from Masood, but with the language barrier this wasn't possible. They also operate in Africa style, not ever telling us the plan, or change it without telling us and we just tootled along behind them. So in the morning the boys chatted about leaving the landies behind and going with Masood to the lakes as an option. Bruce and Andy however did want to try some of the smaller-bigger dunes.

With our tyre pressure down and harder early morning sand we skipped out of our camping dunes, no problem and headed for some petrified trees in the middle of nowhere. There were bits of fossil tree lying everywhere with some impressive larger tree trunks with roots lying on their side. Dad would have loved this! I must find out how a tree becomes petrified. There must have been a whole forest here millions of years ago.

We were then back on the rough tar road to Germa, with potholes and ruts, it was like a dirt road. We could see the monster dunes approaching from miles away and I now realise what everyone was talking about when they say the Libyan dunes are so big. It was like a sand mountain, which rose out of nowhere, and I wondered how fast they move and when the little base camps were going to be covered up one day? We watched in awe as tourist parties headed out in groups of 4-5 Toyota land cruisers and picked a way up the sand mountain. Fathi told us that a tourist vehicle had rolled in the dunes today but that was all the information we could find out.

At 4pm we were still waiting to play in the smaller dunes and finally Masood took us on a drive up the bottom of a large dune but it only lasted 10 mins. So much for our baby dune practice. We then braced ourselves for the ascent up the dune mountain and following Masood we climbed up a dune, on top of a dune, on top of another dune, luckily making it up 1st time. Ubhejane did brilliantly! We camped in a dune valley on top of the dune escarpment which was unbelievably beautiful. There were dunes as far as they eye could see and Bruce and I hiked up one of the peaks for an impressive view. Another brilliant camp in the dunes and we chatted around the fire with Andy and Noeleen's Dutch oven cooking another veggie curry.

I'm sad we can't drive further on the dunes but I have to remember that we still have 6 months to go and the wear and tear on the Landy could be fatal. Our last night in the Sahara dunes .

Fri 28 Mar 08

Day 27

The Lakes - Hun

420km

Driving the landy down in the morning was easier than I thought and I wondered if we could have made it to the lakes after all, but the decision to go in Masoods car had been made. Ahmed, Andy, Noeleen, Bruce and I all bundled into Masoods landcruiser and took off on a 100km circuit trip to 3 lakes. Masood is an expert driver and after about 30mins I understood why we would never have made it in our landies. Some of the ascents and descents were so steep they must have been about 70deg once we had got out of the valley. We were driving through a dune graveyard as Masood pointed out the remains of landcruisers that had never made it to the Lakes and rolled down the dunes. Again my respect for the dunes rose. The Lakes looked magical and surreal with bulrushes and palm trees around them. It was 45km of dune driving to get to the first one. Gabarone Lake was the biggest and an aqua-blue green colour with massive dunes surrounding it. We did a crazy decent with Andy and Ahmed on the back of the landcruiser and then took the 'black' run to the 3rd lake. Until now there were loads of well worn tyre tracks and we were doing speeds of 100km/hr on the flat sections, like the M4. But now there were practically no tracks and Masood had to read the dunes knowing what drop off lay on the other side of the ridge. Everyone was silent as we negotiated the dune mountain. We were in expert hands but a sharp decent at the wrong angle nearly made us roll as we hit the chassis and Masood had to turn and accelerate into the drop. Shoh, that was close!! With the sun high, the sand was turning to fesh fesh (deep fine powdery sand) which is very difficult to drive in. Again I was glad I was in expert hands. It is not advisable to drive in the heat of the day although it was winter and still cooler temperatures there was lots of fesh fesh at 1pm.

We swam in the 3rd lake, even though it's not customary for women to swim. Masood took us to a secluded spot on the lake so that we could have a swim out of sight. To our surprise the water and sand about 1meter below the surface was scalding hot with cooler water on the top! It was so hot we couldn't put our feet down and so salty we floated with ease like the dead sea. Really weird and I can't understand why it's so hot at the bottom??? It was an exhilarating drive deep into the dunes and we made it safely back to our landies. The Sahara has been the highlight of our trip and I'm so sad to leave.

Leaving the sand dunes we had green tea at Ali's (another guide) house in Sabha and then pushed on well into the night, against our wishes to finally camp at the side of the road by a petrol station. The potholes and broken tar was terrible and slow going and I wondered what the rush was all about! I want to stay in the Sahara!