Near Death Experience

Faysal is up and the car is packed and the tire is changed in short order, my suggestion that we proceed with more caution is ignored, and we once again bomb down the road at 140km/hr or so, cursing trucks and reeking of gasoline. The fish smell seems to have abated.

Approaching In Ecker

We pull through In Ecker, a doubly fenced in reservation of radioactive stone and dust commemorating the three French nuclear blasts of the early sixties, one of which apparently didn’t stay underground and wiped out several Tuareg villages with exotic pestilence.

I-n-Amguel

We get an extra tire at In Amguel, a used one made in the Czech Republic for the equivalent of 10 euros, at a garage that hadn’t been open the day before. Breakfast is an omelette of potatoes much like the tortillas I remember from 28 years ago in Spain, only with much more oil, and French fries for the potato bit.

Camels approaching Tamanrasset

The third tire shreds at 100 km from Tamanrasset, but now we have that spare. That spare shreds 20 km later, at 80 km from Tamanrasset. All of this would have cost us half the time if my satellite phone worked, but it is telling me “Account Invalid”. Faysal stops a car and asks them to call a friend to come get us, which they promise to do when they next get cell service. He then takes off on the next bus, again with one wheel. 15 minutes later he is back: he forgot his cell phone, but has sent the wheel on ahead with the bus driver, who will deliver it to the right garage for repair. An hour later Faysal grabs the next bus. More waiting. The brain goes numb in the heat, and you quickly lose any creativity or initiative...no, wait...that was the Beck's beer I found under Faysal's seat.

An hour later, three young guys pull up with two new, unmounted tires and spend quite a while wrestling the shredded tire off the wheel. They are unable to mount the new tire however, and I send them back to Tamanrasset to do it properly. A few minutes after they leave, the car that Faysal stopped and asked to make a call stops by, reassuring me that they did make the call…and by the way, what happened to the three guys that were supposed to come fix the tire. Faysal appears an hour later with a mounted tire, we take off at 140km/hour, and this time, finally, we do arrive at Tamanrasset.

I have been taking pictures along the way, impressions from a car traveling 140km/hr, but when I point my camera at the American military base just outside town, the camera goes dead. The car works, the camera doesn't, except a few kilometers later it does: chance or technology? I vote for the latter.

Faysal

I have been thinking about this place for 28 years. Seems kind of silly, really. No bandits, no thieves: I spent so much time waiting to get here, I almost died of boredom.

Near Death Experience

Tit, Algeria