Day 93: 16 Nov ’91 Saturday Taghit to Beni Abbes

We left Taghit after two nights at the camp site. We had got to know Eddie, Harriet, Erik and Evelyn quite well. On the final night, all of us ate in the café on the camp site. It was great fun swapping stories and joking around with them. Harriet had a wicked sense of humour and Eddie was very entertaining. Erik was very funny too, waving his arms around and pulling faces.

Also, we met two Belgians riding a motorbike and sidecar into Algeria. Later, we learned that they hit a rock and put a hole in their casing and had to ship it back from the Hoggar Mountains.

Dan and I set off early and were later passed by everyone in their vehicles at different stages. Erik and Evelyn drove alongside in their VW camper van and handed us some packet soups.

The rest of that day was very hard work, pushing on through some very desolate areas which sent my mind reeling when thinking about anything but the lack of things to look at. We cycled into Beni Abbes and its camp site which had a lovely swimming pool, fed by constant mineral spring water. We swam in it and cooled off after a tough day of riding.

Also there, were two Land Rovers and a motorbike containing five English people who had travelled from South Africa and were heading back to Britain. They looked very dirty and scruffy. We were not too impressed with their state of morale. They looked as though they had been through some rough times and could not wait to get home to clean clothes and sheets. We had a beer in the tourist hotel in the evening which felt like a treat. 
(Photo caption: Dan in Taghit looking over the Sea of Sand (notice the man on the bottom left of the picture. He was trying to change money with us.)

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