Not so fun stuff in the desert

Since I won't have to cross the Murzuk Sand Sea anymore, I can go ahead and share some of the mis-adventures I've had there. Where I crossed the desert it was a little over 80 miles from the edge of the highway in Traghan until you came out on the other side into the town of Gatroun on the other side. The first 20 miles was through the sand dunes, then it opened up and was as flat and desolate as could be. Driving across the sand isn't all that bad. It's actually a lot smoother than driving on the busted up asphalt roads. As long as you drive over about 30mph you stay up on top of the sand and there aren't any problems. When you slow down though, you have a real problem on your hands. It's pretty easy to sink down and get stuck. We had 4x4's so this usually just became a several minute process to get unstuck and wasn't really a big problem.

It was an extremely hot week down south. The temp hit 49C and remained over 44C for most of the day. On our way back North, the car overheated. I looked at my GPS and we were 40 miles from Gatroun to our south, 40 miles from Traghan to our north, and 45 miles from the closest thing resembling a road to the east, and nothing but sand for 200 miles west. We didn't have a second car with us this week. This wouldn't have been so bad if Haddi hadn't decided to try and take the radiator cap off. It blew off, burned his hand, and threw the cap into the sand. It took about ten minutes of digging around under the car before we could find it. We then used up just about all of the water we had on us to fill the radiator back up and limped back to Sebha.

Benzene is also a constant issue. They use Benzene instead of gasoline in the south in case you were wondering what the heck benzene had to do with anything. Most of the time, the fuel station was closed. The one day a week it wasn't, you had lines 2 wide down the entire street. We would get fuel off of the contractor, but even he didn't always have any. Our cars had dual tanks, which in theory was just enough to get us to Gatroun, down to Tajerhi, around my other sites, and then back out in Traghan where there was a more reliable station. I say in theory, because we ran out with 10km to go.

I also can now say that I know how to change a flat tire in the middle of the Sahara. Car jacks don't work very well in the soft sand. You're actually better off digging out from under the tire to get it off.

I always had a sat phone, gps, and a sat internet uplink. I don't think we were ever in any real danger. Worst case we had to sit in the shade for a little while and wait for the heat to die down.