Into North Africa

Into North Africa. Dunes, Camels and Tea

Waving goodbye to Spain and catching a glimpse of the great island fortress of Gibraltar, We embarked on the ferry trip to Ceuta. 

I know that some of you have never heard of it and yet you probably have heard of the political wrangling between the EU and Britain over the territory of Gibraltar.......... what those bodies never talk about is that Ceuta is a Spanish territory on the mainland of North Africa, in what would otherwise be Morrocco..... I think there's a moral there somewhere.

We arrived safely and disembarked into rather a shabby port town. I had never seen real poverty before, but over the next few weeks that would change. Ceuta was the first clue of what was to come.

We walked and walked. Again it was another scorching hot day, but the sea breeze felt good and following it we found ourselves on a vast stretch of beach. We headed East following a line of immense dunes and of course the waves on our other side, roaring as they crashed onto the beach. It was a beautiful place. There was not a soul to be seen !

It had been a long day by the time that we decided to pitch our tents on the dunes and 'brew up'.

Brewing up is a quaintly English thing to do. We do it to destress, to relax, to ponder.... this was one of those moments. We needed a plan and we needed to rest. Teabags were pulled out of our plastic bags along with our small gas stove. We erected one of the tents to give us some shade and waited for the kettle to boil...... yes..we had a kettle !

As it started to scream, we finished putting up the other tent. The tea was made and out came our books. I had brought with me a copy of Kerouacs 'On the Road', and I lazed back onto my pack to enjoy the 'downtime'.

I don't know how much later it was, but the sun was still up.....clocks had already become meaningless to us..... and I woke up from a slumber that I had slipped into. There was a strange metallic sound coming from over the dunes and behind us. I'd never heard anything like it, so I got Jamies attention and we stood up, alert to any possible threat or danger. For some reason we were anxious about our arrival in Africa. What little we knew about it had come to us courtesy of the BBC, and not much of it was good.

There was a loud snort and the distinct sound of plodding feet..... heavy feet.

Over the dunes came a camel, covered in blankets and brass pots and pans of every description. I have to say that Id seen a camel before at Paignton Zoo in Devon. This was NOT that camel. This camel didn't like us.....I could tell by the crazy glint in its eye. Yes, eye ! It only had one.

Suddenly running over the dune and chasing it, came a wizened old man. He was shouting loudly and seemed panicked, but stopped in his tracks when he saw us.......as had the camel.

We all looked at each other, suspiciously at first, but realising that we were not a threat to each other, he walked over to the camel and soothingly made it lie down. As he did so, he took some strange cooking utensils and pots from the camels back and started to busy himself with making a fire in the sand. 

I showed him our small stove and he became very animated and happy.

We watched.

He started to cook something.... 

The whole process took about an hour and the sun was definitely going down by the time he had finished. He called us over and offered us..... doughnuts !

He had just made the most delightful, jam filled doughnuts !

We could not believe our eyes.

We all sat down. I lit up the small gas stove again and we brewed up another pot of tea.

It seemed appropriate.

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