I spent the better part of this morning getting re-acquainted with my old mate sleeping in, that is after I woke up promptly at 6am panicking that I was late for whatever the departure time was on the truck. This is going to take some getting used to, I'm having overlanding withdrawals, technically I'm still overlanding, so maybe I'm having Dragomaniacs withdrawals.

I managed to stay in bed until 9am before going off to breakfast and then attempting to explore the town a little. It didn't take very long and I had an early lunch and sat in a restaurant watching the world go by.

I didn't do much for the rest of the day, until 4pm when the Land Rover arrived to pick me up for my Safari in the Great Sand Sea, the eastern most part of the Sahara. We drove out of the oasis and were instantly in the desert, we drove over some really high dunes, the car became like a roller coaster without a track and with almost nothing to hold onto. We came across a lake in the middle of the desert, which was surrounded by reeds. We had a swim in it and there were actually fish in there. It was so odd to see water surrounded by sand dunes, I swam from one side of the lake to the other, when I got to the other side, I couldn't put my feet down as the bottom was a layer of slime that I just started sinking into. I had to turn around and swim straight back. I lay on the shore for a while in ankle deep water letting the fish nibble at me before getting out and sunning myself to dry off. I had gone in fully clothed, in awesome shorts yet again.

We left the lake and went further into one of the most majestic deserts I have ever seen. We stopped and walked for a while and there were sea shells on the ground and fossils of star fish and other strange marine creatures. At one point this area had actually been an ocean.

A hot spring was next on the agenda and I was the only one who went in. It did look a bit scungy, but I could resist swimming in the middle of the desert yet again. It was getting late, so we drove up to the top of a big dune and watched the sunset over the mighty expanse that is the Sahara. I sat there watching the sunset, again thinking of how much I am going to miss the desert and wondering if I would ever go anywhere cold in my lifetime.