A Dusty Ride to Douz

Winding around hairpin turns alongside crumbling cliffs in the Atlas Mountains my heart pounded hard against my chest. I buckle myself in for a long, sometimes rocky ride, to the adobe brick city of Douz.

The narrow road is like a black-paved umbilical cord carrying our white Landcruiser into the heart of the Sahara.

A caravan of white RVs and Jeeps loaded with tourists move like a pack of camels across the desert ripping up a storm of dust. They narrowly dodge pedestrians wrapped in dirty turbans with wrinkled skin, graying mustaches and expressionless faces. Sun-drenched cultures frozen in time.

It's commonplace to see street cafes filled with men in ankle-length brown woolens drinking flavorful mint tea. They sit for hours on plastic chairs people-watching. Women are nowhere to be found.

After the mountains, the desert opens up into a vast sea of small grassy shrubs called Tamarisk and endless white salt flats. Baby camels stay close to the family. Fathers give themselves a morning rubdown against electricity poles.

Zena says that this used to be a giant ocean millions of years ago and dinosaur bones can still be found.

We are traveling through the Chott el Djerid; the largest salt pan in the Sahara covering over 4,000 square miles. The Chott usually receives five inches of rain a year but an unusual storm dumped that much in day this September. The results lead to massive flooding, destruction of homes and 17 deaths.