First of all, I didn’t want to give the blue guy the keys to the car, I merely considered it. If only not to anger him. The thought of him and his friends at some Moroccan chop shop was all too real. That was just one the many horrible decisions we had to make in this short 24 hour period. Never have so many difficult decisions been put before me AND I’M AN ER DOCTOR! The next, and I do feel bad, was to take the nicer of the two camels. Overgaard was left to the one that was spitting and sneering at us. He definitely was not into the whole beast of burden thing. But I make up for it later in this story.

I really did enjoy the trek into the desert, despite the uncomfortable ride. Chris didn’t mention this but while it was still light out, the kid came to us asking for a lighter or a match. We didn’t have one. You could see the angry lines drawn above his head as he turned to walk into the desert. Who knows how far he had to walk to get one b/c there was nothing but sand in every direction for as far as you could see. When he got back he started cooking. At this point it’s dark out and it’s now when he asks that just one of us accompanies him into the desert to retrieve some unknown item. (How had I gone thru AP Spanish and not learned the word for SALT!!!) Feeling guilty for taking the good camel earlier, I volunteered to go with the kid, a decision I immediately regretted.

Now Chris had mentioned that we were weaponless, this is wrong. The entire trip I had my trusty Byrd knife with me. I never let it out of my sight…except this one time. I left it at the camp with Chris and he had no idea. Not that I know what I would do if I needed to use it. Either way I was mad at myself for forgetting it. Next I found myself following our young guide up the sand dunes of the Sahara. Now I’m in pretty good shape but after the first dune I was totally drained. Walking up a wall of sand is incredibly hard and I realized one thing…if I had to run for my life, I wouldn’t be able to. And it was at this point that my light went out. Fuck.

This is by far the single scariest moment of my life. (I’ve been on the back of a loose crocodile, flown a helicopter, got my parachute twisted up as I fell to earth and been in a few car accidents, none compare). I turned around and there was nothing but blackness. An abyss of nothing, not one reflection. My head was spinning with every possible outcome for this night, all at once. I didn’t even know what direction the camp was or the rest of civilization. All I knew was that I was 2 hours into the Sahara desert, I was lost and I didn’t trust the person I was with. At so many points I wanted to just take off running but I kept following.

I never did get lost thank goodness. We ended up reaching another campsite. Chris described the scene perfectly. If this was a movie, someone would say “People died here.” Such an eerie feeling. I really was expecting some sort of ambush. Next thing I know I found myself rummaging in someone else’s campsite for some unnamed item. It turned out to be the salt. Salt.

The journey back was uneventful. I can’t describe in words how excited I was to see Chris again. I’ve never been so happy to see another human being. I’m glad he was there. I still have no idea how long we were gone. At one point I thought Chris may have gone out to try to find us. And what was worse, going through what I did or sitting back a camp, waiting and waiting for the worst. We both retold our stories, I’m sure we sounded like little girls but I don’t care. If anything bad was going to happen, it would’ve happened already…we were safe. The rest of the night was peaceful, slightly awkward as the kid tried to engage us in non-stop bongo playing and quite. I came to Morocco for an adventure, boy did I get it.