Love

Backblipped 5th March

A lot of snoring went on last night however still felt quite refreshed this morning and my bag packing and mattress rolling is working like a dream now! Lots of quite rocky hamada in the morning and then I had a minor camera disaster! Was having a wee (as you do in the desert when you're drinking as much as you do!) and hadn't put it away properly and it fell out of my bag onto a rock. UV filter cracked big time however thankfully no other damage and one of the guys, Alan, kindly lent me his which was so kind of him.

Rest of the morning was spent walking through a landscape that was like Mars - so much rock everywhere and quite bleak in a dramatic way if that makes sense - a lot of films actually use this part of the desert and Ouarzazte actually has a couple of film studios in it too.

The group that I was with also changed the game being played to Wrong Fancy - ie someone who you quite fancy but is really quite wrong and a bit random (eg Jeremy Packman) - and at the same time we overheard the group in front, who were playing the alphabet game, shout out Christopher Biggens - as you can imagine that caused lots of laughter!

More rocks/lunar landscape after lunch with everyone trying to find some fossils - though I was unsuccessful in that quest.

As we approached our camp (with another shower!) at Erg Chegaga we saw the building that turned out to be a neglected hospital/school. Had been built by the Swiss about 8 years ago but they couldn't get people to work there so it's been abandoned.

We also saw Chegaga - the highest sand dune (300 feet) in the area that we were due to climb in the morning - it looked enormous - and very sandy!

A couple of men came to camp at night selling polished fossils - however they weren't keen to barter so didn't buy anything.

This evening's briefing was slightly scary - all about tomorrow being the "C" in The Sahara Challenge, how it would be the longest walking day, how hot it would be etc etc so did go to bed a little apprehensive.

Day Four Stats:
10.5 miles/7 hours 28 mins
Ascent/descent 363/362 feet
Calories 2297
Map