Tortuga Death March, Las Peñitas, Nicaragua (Nov 2007)

“¿Quién habla mejor español?”

Three blank faces, and then I say, “He’s asking us who understands the most Spanish…wait…I guess that means it’s me.”

We’re in trouble already, but we don’t know it yet. Nicaragua has been surprisingly easy to travel in; after the other Latin American countries I’ve been through and knowing Nica’s reputation, I was anticipating opportunistic merchants, dirt tracks for major highways, broken down buses, and food poisoning. It’s been a welcome surprise to find roads in good condition (almost definitely built by the Americans during the whole Contra debacle) and transportation that leaves on time and has a fixed price. Despite this it’s been a long day already, hauling from Laguna de Apoyo to Antigua then backtracking to Managua and then on to Léon to pick up a taxi to Las Peñitas, and now we have finally achieved beach. Specifically, a beach known for good beginner surf waves and the nearby nature preserve where the Olive Ridley tortoises lumber from the ocean at night in droves to lay their delicate, endangered eggs in piles of sand scooped together by giant flippers.

Thus tonight’s activity. After slowly starving on bus after bus all day, we have checked in to the Barca del Oro and ordered just about everything on the menu, in between bites inquiring with gestures about the turtle walk tour and how to sign up for it. We hand over a fistful of cordobas to the hostel manager, and in return receive three slips of paper written in a language none of us understand. As we’re finishing up our meal a slim young man comes and sits at our table—he will be our guide tonight, and speaks no English.

It’s another one of those conversations where I am leaning in with my head tilted to the side, face scrunched up in concentration as I try to decipher the carefully enunciated syllables this patient man is speaking. I learn some new words, tortuga (turtle) and suerte (luck). As in, if we are very lucky we may see the big turtles, but it is the end of the season and most of the turtles have already fulfilled their instinctive imperative and made their best effort at avoiding extinction. He tells us that we are assured of seeing the baby turtles, however, as the eggs are collected and cared for until they hatch and then released.

He warns us, “Usted va para cinco kilómetros, hasta que veamos una tortuga. Y cinco kilómetros mueven hacia atrás. Es una manera larga. La primera parte es fácil, la manera detrás es muy difícil.”

I am translating as best as I can for my two companions who understand even less Spanish than I do. “He says, we will walk a long way, and maybe we will see a turtle. He says the walk back is… more difficult?”

Leia asks, “Did he say five kilometers?”

“Maybe… but that’s not so far, it’s only a couple of miles, right? How hard can it be?”

Like I said, we’re already in trouble.

We meet back at the restaurant a few hours later, having napped only a little bit. We are exhausted already, a new word I learn when our guide sits down next to me and asks if I’m tired, which I don’t understand until he mimes out collapsing with weariness. Cansado.

We’re off—there are a few other gals from our hostel who are also going tonight. They have flashlights, we don’t; mental note before next trip, get a damned flashlight. And then remember to pack it. We walk onto the beach and then wade into the tidal pool where a small canoe is waiting to paddle us across to the island. The water is only a foot or so deep right now, but the tide will come in later and we’ll definitely need that boat on the way back. Our guide has two friends with him, his brothers as it turns out, one a teenager and a young boy. We pass the park caretaker hut with it’s friendly lantern, paying our admission fee and then heading off down the beach.

It is a truly beautiful night, with a full moon glimmering off the waves. I could probably read a book by this moonlight. We stroll down the beach carrying our shoes, who cares if we see turtles really this experience is transcendent enough already, slowly walking down an unspoiled stretch of sand with the Pacific thundering to our right, water that stretches unimpeded for thousands of miles until those waves hit Japan. I am opening up to the night, soaking it in through my pores, closing my eyes and pushing my face into the wind to smell the salt in the air, my muscles adjusting a tiny bit to the slope and the drag of the sand with every step on the smooth sand as the tide is going out.

That’s why walking or running on the beach is such good exercise, because you have to work harder, even if just by a little bit, for every step on this uneven and sometimes treacherous surface. And we keep walking.

And walking. We chat with the other tourists, who are not winded. Neither are we, yet. No turtles yet, but the kid brother has scampered off ahead and returns gleefully brandishing a crab. We all gather around and inspect the crab with our guide’s flashlight. The kid is holding it carefully, making sure it’s pincers are clamped to its sides and impotent. We shine the light in its eyes—that is one angry crab. It’s body is about the size of my palm, and if looks could kill that crab would have brought on the next Ice Age. We laugh about the crab’s useless rage and then release it. And keep walking.

Our guide tells us, not much further. Not much further until what he doesn’t say. The light is still playing on the water, the salt is still in the air and the waves are still rebounding back towards Japan but I’m not paying that much attention to it anymore, I’m concentrating on putting one foot in front of the other. Where are the fucking turtles?

We see the flashlight waving ahead, he’s calling us forward. He’s stopped. Did he find a turtle?

No. This is just the end of the island. We’ll stop here for a while. There’s a thatch hut further up with some stools and we make for that, but as soon as we arrive our guide warns us that it is riddled with mosquitos. Probably loaded with dengue fever, malaria, and every other disease you don’t want to get. Fine, we are past the point of caring and flop on the sand accepting the inevitable grit that will work it’s way into our underwear. We are panting now, and our water bottles are empty. That was indeed a long walk.

We are told that on the other side of this narrow island, to our left is a lagoon, but we can’t go there because there are…did he really say crocodiles?? I wonder if we will canoe back the length of the island on the lagoon, that would be fun. Or when one of the park’s four wheelers will roar up to take us back. Neither of these things will happen.

It is a lesson that I should’ve learned by now, that the only way out is the way you got in, and the only things that are going to carry us back to our hotel to collapse are our sore feet and trembling legs.

Let’s just get it over with.

I stride off ahead of the group. Fuck the ocean, fuck the turtles, I am concentrating on eating up the ground in front of me as fast as I can. The teenage brother walks ahead with me, laughing in words I occasionally understand about how crazy I am and how fast I’m going. I wave him off, I am trying not to be rude but if I stop I won’t get up again. I ask him if he has any water—no. My mouth is completely dry now and cramps are starting to shoot through the big muscles in my thighs. I stagger to a halt and fall on the sand, drawing in harsh breaths that cut at my throat. My friends are somewhere behind me and I’m sure they’re suffering just as much as I am if not more, but I can’t go slowly to stay with them or I just won’t go. Back up.

The tide is coming in now, we are walking higher up on the beach in choppy dunes, the grade even steeper as my left foot is striking the sand at least an inch or two lower than right. I walk backwards for a while to try and even out the strain. The teenage kid can’t get enough of that, he is running ahead and then looping back to stay with me laughing all the while. I see a light far ahead down the beach—the caretaker’s hut! The end is in sight!

Being able to see the finish line gives me that extra jolt of energy that I needed, and I plow ahead. A slight curve in the shoreline obscures it for a moment, now it’s back, I’m drawing closer, thank god this trial is almost over. I ask this teenage kid if there’s water there, he doesn’t think so but maybe. I head for the light… just go towards the light… la luz, la luz…

I stumble to a halt a few meters away. Here, on this protected beach in a national reserve, a few locals are camping out by a bonfire. It wasn’t here when we walked past the first time. I stop, swaying, my feet plunged into the sand up to my ankles to keep me upright. They stare at me and I stare back, devastated. I swivel abruptly and march past them without a word or a friendly gesture, I am far past caring about social niceties.

The teenage kid is worried about me now, he’s not laughing anymore as my distress becomes clearer. I am tearing each gasp of air down into my parched lungs, weaving across the sand with my head down, there could be a giant turtle right next to me and I wouldn’t know or care. I string together enough Spanish words to explain that I thought the light was the end of the beach, and to ask him how much further. About a kilometer, maybe a little more. I would cry but I don’t have the moisture to spare for tears and it would accomplish nothing anyway; sitting down to cry would only delay the moment that I have to get up again and keep going so what’s the point.

Every step forward is a push, bringing me closer to the end of this tortuous walk but not enough and not fast enough. I see another light but the last disappointment was too much, I just look at it dully and plod on. There’s someone sitting higher up on the beach in the darkness and I trudge past. Wait, the teenager is stopping me and pulling me back, don’t stop me I need to keep going, he’s waving frantically trying to tell me something…

That’s the caretaker on the beach. The hut is a few meters behind him, it’s light shielded. We’re here. And the bucket he’s cradling is full of baby turtles ready to be released to the waves. I’m far ahead of the rest of the group, and he motions me over to him. With gestures I finally understand, and reach into the bucket to pick out a turtle. They’re tiny, about three inches long. I cradle mine in both hands even though one would be enough, watching its teeny flippers paddle helplessly as I place it on the sand. We turn the flashlight off because it confuses them, they go towards the moonlight on the water. I watch my little turtle trundle over the sand, implacably struggling over each small chop in the sand, every centimeter of ground gained in clumsy battle with the physics of the little thing’s biology, those flippers are meant for water not land but it’s unstoppable and it’s making progress, however slowly. It reaches the waterline and is swept back several feet by the first rush of foaming surf, overturned, fins waving as it tries to right itself and eventually does and turns back towards the light on the water and back into the surf.

This time it makes it, one tiny, defenseless creature consumed by those thousands of miles of open water. It will almost definitely perish before the moon shines on the ocean again.

Swapping Stories with Strangers in Otavalo, Ecuador (Jul 2006)

I squeeze onto the bus at 6am and quickly appropriate a window seat, sliding my backpack onto the floor underneath my feet. It’s my third day here and I don’t trust my pack out of my sight yet; I’d rather ride for several hours crunched into the fetal position clutching my meager belongings than watch the handlers toss it up on the roof. I’ll be crunched into the fetal position anyway, as these buses seem to be designed for riders with a maximum height of 5’4”. Looking around, I can understand why; I am definitely the anomaly here, my nearly 6’ of paleness contorted as if I’m in a medieval torture device.

My glance is quick, though, and safely hidden behind mirrored sunglasses. I don’t want to make eye contact with anybody, I’m nervous and alone and I don’t speak Spanish and I stick out like the proverbial sore thumb. I stare aggressively out the window as if the dirty bus station is the most fascinating thing I have ever seen in my life. It may be my first time visiting the third world, but at least I’m an expert at GO AWAY body language.

The bus is filling up, and the empty seat beside me is bound to be filled eventually. I am rather dreading it, not knowing if I will be sitting next to a woman clutching a dirty child, or a shabby package tied with string, or a chicken, or worse next to a leering man (no taller than 5’4”) with black teeth and dirty fingernails. These seem to be the options, and whoever it is even after three days I know they’ll likely spend the three hour bus ride gawking openly at me. It’s almost definitely not malicious or mean-spirited; if you got on a bus and the last empty seat was next to Sasquatch you’d stare too.

I’m staring out the window so aggressively that I don’t even see the man when he stops at my row. “May I sit here?” he asks politely, in American-inflected English. I start, which rather ruins the image I’ve been cultivating, and stammer, “S-sure.” He is indeed around 5’4”, and settles in with a modern-looking backpack cradled on his lap. No chickens or children. I return to my aggressive staring.

“Where are you from?” He asks, again politely. No gawking, no leering, and his teeth seem to be in pretty good shape.

“New York.”

“The city? What part?”

“…Brooklyn?”

“I lived in Manhattan Valley when I was there.”

“Really? When did you live in New York?” My tense GO AWAY posture is dissolving.

“A couple of years ago. I was studying Performance at NYU.”

Unbelievable. The random stranger who chose the seat next to Sasquatch on the bus to Otovalo is in my field, and it’s a pretty small field with two main schools. I went to the other one, but as we compare notes we determine that we do indeed know many of the same people.

His name is Wolf, which is probably a name he gave himself but isn’t as ridiculous as it sounds in the performance field, where people take on personas and end by living them. He’s going to Otovalo to work with a community performance group on an activist piece, using traditional performance styles and mask puppetry to raise awareness of issues within the indigenous population. Damn, this is interesting.

We talk about Ecuador, too, and traveling. He tries to advise me, saying “Just try not to look like a touris…” and breaks off, taking another look at me. “I know. I’m tall,blonde, and I have a backpack. It’s not gonna happen.” We laugh together.

He invites me to come to their performance workshop that evening; I uncertainly demur. No matter how interesting this is, he’s still a stranger and a male in a foreign country known for it’s machismo attitudes towards women, especially women alone.

The bus pulls in to it’s stop outside of town at 8am. My guidebook is silent on this, I don’t know how to get to the market from the bus stop. Wolf guides me, we share a cab to town and I check into my hotel, randomly chosen from the Rough Guide because it’s right on the main square. We part ways, him to make masks and me to shop, but have agreed to meet for an early dinner or a late lunch, however it shakes out.

Otovalo’s Sunday market is rumored to be the largest on the South American continent, and spreads over more than a square mile. I plunge into the middle of it, dodging the tour groups of fifteen or more that plod together. We’re all tourists, all Sasquatches, but I enjoy a private feeling of slight superiority that at least I’m not wearing a souvenir sun visor and a fanny pack while treading closely on the heels of a weary guide. There are bright tapestries everywhere, and toy llamas, and smoke billows everywhere from grubby hot plates issuing delicious odors of cooking meat that will probably give me food poisoning. Guinea pig is the specialty here. I eat a slice of watermelon instead.

I’m here to shop, and shop I shall. I wander through the same streets many times, the vendors calling out to me in words I don’t understand. I try to keep moving, a permanent half smile pasted on my face and still shielded from eye contact. I start buying things, slowly at first, hesitant. I don’t know what these things are worth, and they’re certainly not going to tell me. I haggle for my first item, a small toy llama. I’m sure I overpay for it, but it’s a mistake that costs all of a dollar and I’m ok with that. I buy more things, jewelry and sweaters and ponchos, bargaining blindly. I don’t even know if I want these things, but even as a not terribly consumerist American, I know how to buy stuff. Americans are good at buying stuff and spending money, one of the few reasons we are welcomed as tourists.

By early afternoon I’ve exhausted the market, but it’s too early to meet Wolf. I drop off my bags at the hotel and consult my guidebook. Wolf had mentioned a waterfall near town, an easy bus ride away. I have time to kill so I decide to walk, noting the directions to “go out of town to the road paralleling the railroad tracks.” This road doesn’t have a name, but then again none of them do. My guidebook says, “You can’t miss it,” although I know they’ve grossly underestimated my ability to miss things. Nonetheless I head out again; I don’t have a sun visor or a fanny pack, I didn’t come here to hunker in my hotel room and wait for someone to tell me what to do.

The sun is brilliant up here, at high altitude in this Andean valley, with rafts of clouds breaking up the sunbeams playing over the landscape. I push back through the market, faster this time, no half smile, and then out trying to find the railroad tracks. I find them, eventually, and start walking up the nameless dirt road, just praying that I have not indeed missed an unmissable road that lies elsewhere.

I’m the only non-native in sight, walking alone up this road, while locals occasionally pass by going the other way. They stare openly, as if to confirm that I’m lost and clearly not anywhere that tourists should be. It’s not unfriendly, though, and it’s still broad daylight and I can turn back and retrace my steps if I need to, so I keep going. Some kids are playing soccer in a field to my left, and a stray kick sends the ball straight towards me. Ten faces turn towards me in unison, expectant grins hovering just out of sight—how great is it going to make their day when the gringa kicks the ball back into the game?

I try, but I miss the ball entirely the first time. The second time I make contact but the ball skews off in the wrong direction. The kids are all laughing now, but it’s not unkind laughter, exultant in a different way; they get to feel superior to this awkward first worlder, and that’s fine with me. I smile and wave back and then continue on.

And on. I see a herd of llamas grazing, which is interesting enough to distract me from my increasing conviction that I’m going the wrong way. Finally I see a steep gravel road branching off to the right, and wonder of wonders it’s even signposted. My guidebook only lied a little bit; I was on the right road the whole time, but this whole endeavor was a little more than a casual 15 minute stroll. I’m not sure whether to blame the book, the lingering altitude sickness that leaves me panting and dizzy, or my general poor physical condition. Whatever, I’m here.

The road leads up to a compound on the edge of eucalyptus grove, and there are signs in Spanish and English telling me that this is a sacred waterfall. I’m not really clear on how or why it’s sacred, and as I spend the next few weeks traveling through Ecuador it seems like every waterfall is sacred in some non-specific way. Maybe it’s something they say for the tourists, so we feel like we’re having an authentic experience. Maybe here in this land of mountains and jungles, streams of clear water falling from great heights are always sacred. No way to tell.

The grove is peaceful, despite the chattering stream of people moving up and down the path. It’s not as crowded as the market was by a long shot, and there are no fanny packs or visors; this place isn’t on the group itinerary. I walk slowly, closing my eyes occasionally to breathe in the crisp smell of eucalyptus leaves. I would never have thought to find a grove of eucalyptus here, associated as it is my mind with pandas in China. When I reach the waterfall it’s pretty enough, but for me the forest has more of an impact. I wander around for a while and then turn back, at least it’s downhill this time going down that dirt road that parallels the railroad tracks. The soccer game is over, and the sun is sinking lower, piercing beams slicing at acute angles across the valleys.

It’s time to meet up with Wolf. Actually, it’s too early for dinner but I don’t care, I’m starving and have eaten only a slice watermelon today and that was before my inadvertent hike. I take a quick shower and wear my new poncho and the red beaded necklace.

We walk through town to a restaurant that Wolf knows, Italian food, oddly enough. There are long, heavy wooden tables with benches and a fireplace, but it’s too warm for a fire. We are the only people there, and the staff welcomes Wolf as a familiar face. There’s a minimum of smirking at the fact that he’s accompanied by me. He recommends a pasta dish, assuring me that it’s safe to eat even for a delicate, pampered tummy like mine.

We talk over dinner, and I explain that I don’t speak a word of Spanish although I can understand some of it filtered through my spotty memory of French. He insists that I should just start speaking it, as much as I can even if it’s only a word or two and that I will learn quickly. In fact, he suggests that we carry on our dinner conversation in Spanish only, that he will speak Spanish to me and I will find that I understand it. I protest that the conversation will get a lot less interesting and a lot more frustrating, and eventually we broker a deal—we will tell each other stories. We’re both trained performers and storytellers after all, this is what we do. He will tell me a story in Spanish, and while I am simply not capable of telling him a story in Spanish unless the whole story is “Que? No se,” I reluctantly agree that I will try to tell a story in French (which he speaks in addition to English, Spanish, and Portugese).

He begins. He is using simple words and pausing frequently, his eyes locked on mine to see if I am comprehending.

“Esto es una historia que mi abuelo dijo a mi padre.”

Confusion.

“Esto es una historia de el padre de mi padre.”

“This is… a story of your grandfather?”

“Sí. Un día el padre de mi padre--mi abuelo--montaba en las montañas en night."

“…montaba?”

“En un caballo, vaya”

There are gestures. “On a horse? Your grandfather was on a horse in the…”

“montañas”

“In the mountains! In the mountains at night.”

We go on this way for the rest of the story.

“Sí. Y él vio una luz. Había una luz. Y cuando él vio esta luz, él montó a ella. Era atrasada y él buscaba un lugar para dormir.

La luz estaba en una casa, y la puerta estaba abierta. Él entró la casa.

Un cadáver estaba en la casa. La luz era una vela al lado del cadáver. Mi abuelo se sentó por el cadáver con la noche. En el amanecer él se fue. Esto era porque usted debe nunca dejar un cadáver solo en la noche.”

That is what I remember of the story, at least, the story of his grandfather riding through a deserted stretch of mountains late at night and seeing a light in the distance. He went towards the light, looking for shelter, and found an abandoned house with a candle in the window and a corpse laid out in the main room. On seeing this, he sat down, and stayed with the body through the night until dawn. This was because it is a custom in the mountains that the dead must not be left alone through the night before burial.

Now it’s my turn, and I quickly realize how much French I’ve forgotten. My story is studded with cursing at myself and occasional phrases of English.

“J’allais… driving?? Crap! J'allais… sur une route. C'était nuit, avant le jour. J'allais à l'ouest. J'étais seul. J'ai vu les étoiles et la lune devant moi, et le soleil derrière moi. J'étais entre le jour et la nuit.”

It wasn’t even a story, really, just a moment I remember, driving across New Mexico in the pre-dawn darkness, alone for miles with only headlights for company, looking into the inky blackness of the night in front of me studded with stars and a sinking moon, seeing the first rays of dawn behind me in the rearview mirror, alone in the place between day and night.

Wolf is proud of me. He invites me to join him that evening, at a party in the local community. There will be a bonfire, and dancing, and they will work with the masks he’s been making. It sounds like an amazing experience, an unlooked for chance to get behind the scenes and to a place where a tourist like me would normally never get to go.

I turn him down. Yes, it sounds amazing, but he’s also a stranger and I’m a stranger here, and I’m tired, and while it would be appealing to get away from tourist things there is comfort there, a sense of protection. I’m not ready for this experience yet, I’ve only been here three days and I can’t even make eye contact with people.

I thank Wolf for dinner, and for the story, and then I go back to my hotel and go to sleep.

Camel Trekking in Erg Chebbi, Morocco (Feb 2008)

We are not being hard-bitten, savvy travelers, going across the world on 27 cents low to the ground, moving with the locals. Today we are being stereotypical tourists paying the nice man to take us into the Real Live Sahara on Real Live Camels. We are pretty comfortable with being giggling tourists with cameras today, after a long slog on a bus pulling out of Tenerhir at 5am. Our heads are not modestly covered, we are smoking, and our arms are bare. The only things that can really be said in our favor here are that we are not bucking 4-wheelers across the dunes, like the hundreds of French tourists that arrived in a cavalcade two days before, and we are not dumping trash on the dunes.

We are, however, irritating the crap out of the Canadian tourists who are on this camel ride with us. While we are giggling about camel spit and the fact that Debi is once again taking copious travel pictures of my ass, we are being occasionally shushed. We are ignoring the shushing—if she wanted a private camel trek into the middle of the dunes with no one around, she damned well knew better than to book a one-night trip into Erg Chebbi from Merzouga. We occasionally sight another train of camels loaded with teetering Japanese tourists, their faces split with wide grins and cameras snapping even faster than ours. These dunes are not isolated, although it’s the closest you’ll get without packing in for three or four days.

It’s winter here, so the temperature is a comfortable 80 degrees Farenheit or so and the sun is headed down to the horizon in the west, behind us. Watching our shadows thrown before us, we slowly giggle ourselves out and shush ourselves. The roar of the 4-wheelers has faded behind us as we crest dune after dune. The last graffiti tagged on a dune, with “Pierre aime Sabine” scratched out in dragged footprints, has been left behind an hour ago. Now it’s quiet. There’s a small breeze, not enough to throw sand in our eyes and mouths although I’m glad I have sunglasses. The camels take slow, solemn steps. They are following the camel man, wrapped in flowing robes with a scarf twisted carelessly around his head. He has bad teeth and speaks Arabic, Tourag, and only a little bastardized Moroccan French. So far we’ve communicated with gestures. He is taking slow, solemn steps into the dunes, a rope trailing behind him to my camel with the other camels following behind.

I cannot fathom how he is navigating. The dunes crest and twist, shadows throwing into sharper relief as the sun falls lower behind us. There are small white flowers amidst the sand ripples from time to time, and I see loose camels silhouetted between the dunes ahead of us. The sand is ridged in parallel lines like an optical illusion. I can watch them shift ever so slightly as the breeze blows by, minute changes in miniature cartography. The camel man leads us on what seems to be a very specific path, around the edge of this bowl of sand and along the ridge of that one, moving at precise angles on the slope. Every now and then I can hear a soft “ssssh” as the wind shifts the sand from the top of a dune, a tiny waterfall of sand affecting the smallest of changes to the outline of the dunes.

The camel man stops, and the docile camels stop with him. I say docile, but the whole time they are making alarming, glutinous phlegmy noises, and I can’t tell because I’m the lead camel but I suspect there’s some noisy excretions going on as well. My camel seems to be in a particularly bad mood. Maybe it’s because he’s a different kind of camel; he’s the only white camel and the camel man told me he’s from Mali, while the other three are from Morocco. We’ve stopped so the camel man can recalibrate the slope of this particular dune. He drops the lead line and stoops, scooping sand down the dune in a “ssssh” ing sound, making another step so that our camels can ascend this ridge that has perhaps gotten just a little steeper since the last time he led them up.

We continue on. We’ve almost entirely stopped snapping shots of the dunes around us. It was mostly random flailing anyway, in hopes that one or two representative images would result from this featureless landscape, something that might show the subtleties of the color playing on the sand as the sun glows duller and redder, the tinyness of those little white flowers in a sea of sand. It is like nothing so much as an ocean, and I still cannot figure out how the camel man is navigating. At least sailors had sextants and compasses to lead them across, or the stars.

We come around another mountain of sand and there are loose camels again, much closer. Now I can see that they’re hobbled, not wild camels after all, at least not these ones. These were the supply camels send ahead of us to stock the campsite, and now I can see the long, low Berber tents set up in a circle. The camp residents will prepare a tajine for dinner tonight, but first we hold tight and lean back as our camels collapse wheezing to the ground, kneeling on knobby knees and nearly pitching us over their ears. Maybe they are tired, although we’ve been walking so slowly and patiently. I climb off the camel saddle and try to imagine being a Berber nomad hundreds of years ago, crossing months of sand in slow, solemn steps, following unmarked paths through shifting landscapes to a camp, an oasis, a trading center, a town. To water, food, shade.

Today I’m a tourist. The camp is already made for me, and a smiling man is coming towards me with a battered silver tea pitcher on a tray and a small tea glass. Would I like sugar in my mint tea?