You'll have to Talk Louder--I have Sand in My Ears

The Fat Man in the battered fez pales slightly under his mahogany tan and leans toward me, revealing watermelon sized sweat stains spreading down from the armpits of his rumpled white-linen suit. "Be careful, monsieur," he whispers, nodding his head toward the corner table. "The big legionnaire, he is very mean when he is drunk--"

"Oui, my friend," I interrupt loudly, looking up from my plate of skewered camels' eyes, "and he is ugly like the pig, and unless he apologizes to the lady...." The glass of pastis misses the brim of my pith helmet by an inch, catching the Arab at the next table full in the face. Without thinking, I instinctively pirouette to the T-position fighting stance that François, my childhood savate teacher, has so patiently drilled into my stubborn head. The big legionnaire is coming at me, bellowing like a gut-shot rhino.

"Adieu, mon ami," I laugh as I nimbly plant the balls of my flashing feet squarely in his barrel chest and send him crashing to the tile floor. "Dormez bien!" His two companions disappear into the night.

Nonchalantly stooping to dust off my canvas puttees, I feel a gentle hand touch my shoulder and I turn just in time to feel the crush of Karina's jasmine-scented lips. Aly certainly knew his women as well as his horses.

Overhead, the paddle-bladed ceiling fans continue (continued on page 178) Sand in My Ears (continued from page 117) in their eternal orbit...whip-whop, whip-whop....

The last eight bars of the Marseillaise still hang in the air as I finish cramming my freshly laundered Abercrombie & Fitch safari suit into a blue-and-white Lindblad Travel duffel bag. For weeks, ever since I got loaded at the Adventurer's Club one night and accepted Tuppy Bigelow's challenge to sign aboard a Trans Sahara caravan, I've spent almost every waking moment fantasizing about the adventures I'll have with the Bogart types who will flock to join the god-damnedest expedition I've ever heard of: a five-week, 3100-mile, $3000 camping trip through Mali, Niger and Algeria, stopping off en route at Timbuktu, Agadès and that Holy Grail of Godforsakenness, the salt mines of Bilma.

But now as I sit on the broad, sun-swept veranda of Dakar's luxurious Hotel N'Gor and listen to the 23 international rogues who have signed up swap the names of geriatricians, I'm feeling slightly disillusioned. Near my elbow, dozing in the heat, is a 76-year-old Australian spinster no larger than a half-grown kangaroo. Next to her is another jaded globe-trotter: a sanitary engineer from Indianapolis. At the other tables are a retired camera-store owner and his wife from Neenah, Wisconsin, a retired doctor and his wife from Hartford, Connecticut, a retired geologist and his wife from Tucson, a retired pharmaceutical executive and his wife from Indianapolis, a retired interior designer from Manhattan and a retired gentleman farmer from Chico, California. The other expeditioners, for the most part, are gray-haired widows and wealthy couples who look as though they've never done anything more strenuous than dig for a maraschino cherry with a colored toothpick.

Since arriving in Dakar three days ago, I've been bused about the city and countryside to view the old slave quarters on the island of Gorée, the fishing village of Cayar, a native market, the University of Dakar, the outside of a museum and a native dance troupe. At night I toss on my bed in an air-conditioned cottage and stare at its neatly thatched roof. No huge spider spins down to suck the breath from my lungs. The hotel has even killed the flies. This is like Africaland at Disney World.

But today may be different, for today my fellow soldiers of fortune and I are to fly to Bamako, Mali, where our fleet of eight Land Rovers awaits us. Lindblad's Trans Sahara brochure says, "They are new and especially designed and fully equipped for use in the Sahara...having been fitted with all forward-facing deluxe seats, roof racks, external gas-can brackets and air vents." But no mention of a Bren-gun mount....

The wheels of our Air Afrique plane touch down on the Bamako runway and I step from the 60-degree cabin. My nose hairs curl in the heat of Mali's grasslands. This is more like it. There are the men of Minitrek, the British organization on which Lindblad has fobbed off the responsibility for our chauffeuring, bedding, feeding and doctoring. Mini-trek's grizzled staff are old Saharans, I've been told; but these guys aren't as old as I am and--what's this? Our cooks are women! And married to two of the drivers. How the hell are we going to go out drinking bootleg palm wine till dawn in native brothels with guys who have wives waiting for them back in camp?

Dinner is served in a private room of the Bamako Motel. As we linger over fly-specked cups of thick, sweet coffee, a man at the head table rises to speak. He is Lindblad's answer to Stewart Granger: Herbie Sylge, the boy-wonder president of Minitrek and our expedition leader. Herbie, who stands about 5'4" in his leather desert sandals, looks like a dapper Munchkin. He introduces himself and the man next to him, Mike Foster, our chef de convoy. Foster is more like it. He's about 32, well tanned and has the habit of unexpectedly cocking his head and staring off into space--as if he's harking to the sound of distant camel bells. Disturbingly, however, he also blushes easily.

Third on the expedition's hierarchy is James Wellard, the pipe-smoking, middle-aged author of The Great Sahara and Lost Worlds of Africa. Wellard has been signed aboard to help pass our nights in the desert with learned dissertations on French West Africa's cultural heritage. But alter a few evenings of cutthroat poker, Wellard's favorite game, we discover there's more of John Scarne in him than Mr. Chips.

And last, there is David Goodson, a feisty, mustachioed 42-year-old anesthesiologist from Seattle, dressed in his day-to-day desert uniform--an Air Force jump suit, scout-leader hat, white socks and sandals. He looks like a pint-sized stand-in for Clifton Webb but is, in reality, our trip physician.

Departure day. Our eight Land Rovers are all in a row, having been loaded to the roof racks with sleeping bags, personal luggage, washing gear, provisions, spare tires, mechanic's tools and liquor for pink gins, certainement. I'm well turned out in my Sta-Prest safari suit and rakishly knotted Gucci neck scarf. My desert Hush Puppies are properly scuffed, my nose is smeared with Noxzema and an unlit Gauloises Bleu dangles from my Chap-Sticked lips. With a tooting of horns, we are off in a cloud of brown French West African dust, careening through the potholed streets of Bamako, heading for that legendary symbol of remoteness, Timbuktu, 980 miles away.

With only 979 1/2 miles to go, we are lost--or rather Herbie is lost, having accidentally taken the road to Bougouni, which lies 101 miles to the south. Thirty minutes later, Herbie rejoins us looking somewhat red-faced under the reproachful eye of Mike Foster, and once again we are off. One hundred sixty miles later, our high road to adventure is still paved and we veer off into the bush to camp. Down from the tops of the Land Rovers come sleeping bags, landing in the millions of tiny cockleburs, no bigger than your fingernail, that strew the ground.

Around me in the darkness, expeditioners yelp as they kneel in the cockleburs to spread out their gear. No one can find his flashlight. Herbie is yelling out the location of the toilet tent.

Next morning: The sound of Henry Mancini's rendition of Walk on the Wild Side playing full volume on a portable cassette brings me up from the depths of a weird dream, one in which I'm being chased naked across French West Africa by a carnivorous Land Rover. It's five A.M. and my fellow adventurers, in various stages of undress, are rubbing their eyes and covertly scratching at places where, I presume, they've been sleeping on cockleburs.

Herbie is strutting about in a pair of khaki hotpants, issuing orders like a sergeant major in the Foreign Legion. After wolfing a breakfast of some bilious dehydrated food called Swissy, which reminds me of sweetened Kitty Litter, I discover that my toothbrush and jumbo tube of Close-Up are missing. My mouth tastes like the inside of a mud dauber's nest. Our big Michelin tires begin their already too-familiar thumpety-thump as we pull back onto pavement and continue eastward flat-out at 45 mph.

Twenty-four hours later: same landscape, same pavement, same taste in my mouth. I'm beginning to get a little bored with all this. I can't help thinking of Tuppy Bigelow back at the Adventurer's Club. Right this minute, he's probably sitting in a La-Z-Boy with his feet up, reading Halliburton's The Royal Road to Romance and smoking an Upmann panatela. The bastard. To break the monotony, I pull out my dog-eared copy of The Four Feathers but can't get past the part where Harry Feversham discovers that three officers from his old regiment have branded him a coward.

It's been four nights on the road and finally we're off the pavement and into some primitive terrain, passing Tuareg tent villages where headless goat carcasses lie about on the ground and tethered camels with wicker muzzles snap at the crotches of careless strangers who venture too close. Camp is made in an evil place that's alive with inch-long thistles and nipping ants. Tomorrow, Herbie has announced, we will all be able to wash in the cool, clear water of the Niger River. I'll drink to that. And please let there be a toothbrush for sale in Timbuktu.

At high noon on the fifth day, we engage in the torture of taking the air's temperature with a sling psychrometer. It's 130 degrees Fahrenheit. Madness. The men are beginning to go shirtless and the women have all but abandoned their make-up kits. A few of the older members of our band, I notice, are also acting a little woozy. And tempers are fraying. Where is the Niger River? Herbie said we'd stand on its shady banks by 12:30 P.M. Instead, we've stopped in the middle of a broiling, treeless plain to eat sardine sandwiches and drink hot lemon tea. The ruts we've been following have simply disappeared. Our Michelin map shows a road, but when we look at the ground, there's nothing but cockleburs and nary a misplaced grain of sand to indicate which way to go.

Herbie confers with his staff. "The road has disappeared."

A balding doctor in saddlebag-style chinos and a fishing cap whispers, "What do you mean the road has disappeared?" Perspiration dripping from his sunburned nose forms little patterns in the dust around his sweat-soaked tennis shoes.

"Minitrek, sir, has never been this way before."

"Oh, well, that's different, Herbie. That's different. I always wanted to spend my three-thousand-dollar vacation dying of thirst in Mali."

With a steering wheel in one hand, a compass in the other, Herbie sends the lead car careening across boundless dry lake beds and through forests of camel's-thorn bushes. One hour, two hours, three hours pass. No Niger River. No road. No Tuaregs. Nothing but thorn-bushes, cockleburs and camel dung. No camels--only their dung.

Another restless night. As a full Sahara moon begins to rise, I dream again; this time I'm naked and being chased by a ten-foot scorpion that's using its tail like a bullwhip.

The following morning, dawn's early light reveals a hassi--a deep well a few miles away around which a dozen bedraggled Tuaregs are busily filling goatskin bags with green, odious water. Maps are drawn in the sand. We're farther south than we thought. Some of my comrades are beginning to get really nasty--drinking Johnnie Walker Red Label at eight A.M. and talking in loud, slurred voices.

High noon. The road has found us again. A fork approaches and Herbie, still in the lead, hesitates momentarily and then veers to the right. Foster brakes hard and says we should be taking the road to the left. Herbie is almost out of sight, leaving only a wispy trail of dust hanging in the furnace air.

The sun beats down on our peeling, bright-red shoulders. The women sit in the shade of the Land Rovers. No one speaks. Up on one of the roofs, Foster squints through a pair of 10 x 50 binoculars he's borrowed from a passenger. Silence. Total silence. A bird flies past and we hear the beat of its wings. Dr. Goodson remarks that he's never heard a bird fly before. Right now, I'd sell my birthright, if I had one, for a gallon of ice cream. Any flavor.

"Maybe Herbie broke down," says James Wellard, nervously chewing on his pipe.

One of the crew volunteers to see if he can find the Munchkin. He sets out. Another hour passes. Then we see a column of dust. The driver returns with the news: Herbie is ten miles away, waiting for us to follow him.

"Does he know he's on a dead-end road?" asks Foster in his best Victor Mature voice.

"Yes. He wants to drive cross-country by compass again."

Foster's eyes roll up into his head. "Go back and tell Herbie we'll meet him in Gourma-Rharous."

We wait. A few hyperactive types throw rocks at the sun.

"What did Herbie say?" Foster asks the driver after he's returned the second time.

"He's pissed."

At last we have reached Gourma-Rharous, a settlement on the Niger where muscular natives, expert at poling oil-drum rafts, will ferry us, Land Rovers and all, a mile or so to the far bank, where lies the road to Timbuktu.

And there is Herbie. He looks pink and angry. The front of his shirt and his khaki hotpants are covered with Coca-Cola spilled when he tried to drink while driving. He's walking in a cloud of flies.

"I'd like to remind you of something," he says to Foster. "In the Lindblad brochure, it says, 'For reasons of safety, you will be required to agree in advance to abide by the decisions of the expedition leader.'...As you know, that's me."

Foster speaks: "We're not going to follow you down a wrong road when we're running out of gas and water."

Herbie's lip begins to quiver. "Quite right. Quite right."

Meeting adjourned.

We spend most of the next day crossing the Niger. Bathe in this muck? It looks like liquid Shinola. A few of the passengers, in fact, insist that Minitrek's staff carry them ashore piggyback. Then, toward evening, we begin the push to Timbuktu, traveling on a dusty one-lane road that's used by fewer than two dozen cars a year.

And there she looms before us--the fabled city herself. We pass between her mud-walled city gates at 9:30 p.m. Naked children run in our wake, attempting to hook rides. Black women with babies strapped to their backs and with earrings as big as your fist watch suspiciously from doorways.

We check in at the Grand Hotel, a low cement structure built like Hitler's bunker, with honest-to-God ceiling fans in the bar. Our rooms are cell-block spare, each with a bed, a dresser and, in the more luxe suites, a cone of mosquito netting anchored to the ceiling. The bathrooms are down-the-hall, 9' x 12' windowless cubbies enclosing a basin, an open shower and an ancient toilet with a ceiling-high tank. When the showers are turned on, slugs the size of bullfrogs emerge from the drains. The toilet flushes only at certain hours--no one knows when. It's truly potluck.

After a dreamless ten-hour sleep in a real bed and a vigorous toothbrushing, I'm ready for anything. Now all 24 of us are eager to mail the dozens of postcards from Timbuktu that we've promised friends and relations back home. Traveler's checks in hand, we storm the hotel's registration desk, which doubles as the bar. The hotel doesn't have enough spare cash to cover a five-dollar check. This is the symbol of ultimate remoteness, remember, not Miami Beach. Where's the bank? There is no bank. Where's the post office? It's closed. People are beginning to get surly again. To pay $3000 for the privilege of sleeping on cockleburs is one thing, but to have no stamps for postcards is reason to kill.

God knows where the hotel got them, but finally they appear--sheets and sheets of colorful Mali airmail stamps. We hoard them like gold leaf and spend the better part of the day writing and licking.

Saturday night in Timbuktu. Early evening, a band arrives and begins tuning up. By 11, the outdoor dance floor is jammed with several hundred black couples jitterbugging to the curiously funky beat of French West African high-life music. We all sit on the perimeter of the dance floor, tapping our feet and smiling a lot. Then it happens. In a moment of recklessness, I take a picture of a dancing couple. The guy in the photo is none too happy, because, I'm hastily told, he's been jitterbugging with somebody else's wife. His yellow eyes are big as full moons. His voice drowns out the band.

"Give me film."

"No. I have pictures of your honorable mayor." (When you lie to an angry citizen of Timbuktu who's 6'3" and has a gold ring in his nose, lie big.)

"Give me film."

"Can't I expose just this one shot?"

"Give me film."

The dance floor is suddenly quiet. The natives, you might say, are getting restless. They're mumbling to one another and narrowing their eyes. I can't help but think of the final scene in Zulu--the one just before the massacre. The other expeditioners, I notice, are looking at me like I've just dingled a leper's bell. I give him the film.

The following morning, we repack the Land Rovers and say goodbye to the fabled city of Timbuktu. May its name never lose the magic that traps fools like us into tramping its dusty, pungent streets. And here comes another ship of fools, I see, winging in on Air Afrique.

Out through the city gates we go, Herbie in the lead. Sure enough, he takes the wrong fork again. His Land Rover disappears into the Tanezrouft Desert, on the road to Bou Djébéha, 133 miles away. To hell with him; this time he can find us. We'd ditch him permanently, but he's carrying our passports.

Herbie catches up with us at noon and that night, far into the desert, where no one can hear but the throat-chewing jerboa rats, there is a meeting attended only by Herbie and his staff. Lips are sealed as to what happens out there under the stars, but when it's over, Foster is the new expedition leader. Long live the king!

Two days later, we're over the Mali border and into Niger, pushing on like Patton's Third Army, as most of the group is suffering from French West Africa's version of the common cold: violent diarrhea. Our eight Land Rovers are strung out along a bumpy road when, suddenly, one of them veers sharply toward a bit of foliage. A tiny figure bursts out and sprints for a bush; the vehicle moves a discreet distance away. To minimize these time-consuming stops, Dr. Goodson passes out Lomotil, a drug that closes you up tighter than the lens of a Japanese minicamera.

One full day is all that our truncated schedule will allow in Niamey, the capital of Niger, and it's just as well. Since we're days behind in schedule, thanks to Herbie, the local hotel has had to cancel some of our reservations. To make up for this inconvenience, it generously offers the men sack-out space on the tile floor of its annex--which was once the American Embassy.

One full day or not, Niamey's bright lights and civilized amenities prove irresistible to three guests, who promptly jump ship. Cowards. While they spend two weeks of R & R in Casablanca, we will press on to Agades, a caravan town three days away that's been nicknamed "the boot heel of the world." Lindblad's brochure says: "Agadès has the true atmosphere of a desert outpost...the market places are full of life and color, with nomads from the desert mingling with the Negro peoples from the south and with camel trains continually arriving and leaving, laden with salt, millet, dates, grass for fodder and trading goods of all kinds."

Three days, seven flat tires, one busted rear differential, one bent front axle and one dented rim later, we stand outside Agadés' Hotel de l'Air and learn that it's fully booked. "Where are we going to sleep?" I ask Herbie patiently. Outside town.

Try to imagine, if you can, a vast, scrub-dotted landscape abutting thousands of miles of rolling sand seas and--here is the real test--imagine that on the border between these two no man's lands, there is a pool of bright-blue water shaded by lush tropical foliage in which tiny lizards play. In this pool, I and several other fully clothed guests merrily dunk one another, oblivious of Dr. Goodson's warning that the water is probably infested with liver flukes.

Unfortunately, we don't bivouac long in this Garden of Eden, for ahead is the "most exciting leg of our journey," as Lindblad's brochure puts it, "the Tenere Desert, a vast expanse of sand which stretches for hundreds of miles across the southern Sahara. Constantly threatened by sandstorms, this terrible wasteland is still traversed by caravans of camels carrying salt from the mines of Bilma. On this difficult and forever-changing route, we shall frequently sight the bleached bones of animals who failed to make the journey."

Niger law requires that we hire a guide before tackling the Tenere, as very soon the road will disappear into undulating sand seas. Our fat guide, Rossie, one of the wealthiest men in the area, rides shotgun next to Foster. He studies the landscape and, with a sweep of his hand, indicates the direction we should take through the dune valleys.

Night descends like a jinni drawing a shroud across the sky and the desert grows cold and ominous. I huddle close to a still-warm Land Rover radiator and listen: Gentle wind ripples the sand, forming and reforming it, quietly erasing our tracks. What if someone were to commit the unpardonable sin of offering Rossie the left hand and he were to abandon us? What Moses would lead us from this wilderness then? Would Agadés officials bother to send a search party? Is radiator water safe to drink? Or crankcase oil? Or the glycerin in Herbie's compass? Visions of the Donner Party dance in my head.

Foster has informed us that the best time to drive in the desert is early morning, when the sun's rays have not yet warmed the sand, turning it from a hard-packed surface into a tractionless ocean of grit. Even though we leave early, we soon get stuck, at which point we learn the function of the five-foot steel ladders strapped to the side of each Rover. Once the sand has been scooped away from the tires, the ladders are wedged in front of the rear wheels. Then everyone pushes and the spinning tires immediately bury the ladders six to 12 inches in the sand. Some of us continue pushing, while others must claw for the buried ladders. When the car is finally moving, the driver doesn't dare slow down but roars on to solid ground--perhaps a quarter of a mile away--and the pushers and diggers are left to hike out, dragging the ladders, eyes and noses filled with sand.

By the 60th push, we've got the routine down pat. The air is now so hot that the gasoline in our auxiliary jerry cans and the water in our radiators begin to boil, the latter necessitating additional cooling-off stops. On one of these occasions, the irrepressible Herbie decides to unscrew the cap on his radiator and scalds himself. Could it be the will of Allah?

According to our Lindblad brochure, "The great attraction of Bilma is its very remoteness and inaccessibility, which have kept it completely unspoiled." Lindblad's right. Bilma is the remotest goddamned place I've ever seen. We arrive on the outskirts at dusk and bed down in a secluded valley. Six Tuaregs perch on the edge of a dune and watch our camp take form. Fifty years ago, they would have massacred us on the spot, but now all they want to do is sell us prehistoric arrowheads.

It's three A.M. and--thanks to four fingers of Teacher's--I'm sleeping soundly, my head comfortably dug into the leeward side of a dune. Suddenly, the desert decides to get up and move to another location. The wind is howling like a scene out of Suez, burying gear and tumbling any loose, lightweight objects off across the desert. I've just talked myself into riding out the holocaust ensconced in the sack, when I experience the discomforting sensation of someone walking on my face. Looking around, I see half-dressed expeditioners knocking each other down and scrambling to and fro over still-occupied sleeping bags in a desperate attempt to escape.

As I try to pull on what's left of my safari suit, an exceptionally large sand pile next to me begins to heave and out crawls a woman who's just awakened. She's down on her hands and knees, sleepily surveying the chaos, hair sticking straight out in all directions. Then, raising her face to the sand-blackened sky, she shrieks in a voice that can be heard all the way to New York, "Lars-Eric Lindblad will hear about this."

Next morning. From what I can see through the sand-encrusted windows of my Land Rover, the oasis of Dirkou, 28 miles beyond Bilma, seems to be a military town; soldiers in the Niger army are billeted here in a large garrison ringed by decaying French trucks filled with drifting sand. We have gullibly accepted Rossie's word that the sandstorm will let up. It grows worse. No wonder the Tuaregs lost to the French. Since driving is impossible, we stop and make ourselves as comfortable as we can in a cement-block resthouse. Outside, the wind shakes the wooden shutters and tears at the battered door panels. Inside, we sit on the floor or the broken springs of unpadded iron cots and watch dung beetles as big as our thumbs crawl about, bulldozing crumbs. No one has the energy to squash them. Furthermore, no one even cares.

The same thought is on everyone's mind: Who's going to crack first? To relieve the tension, one of the crew starts to tell no one in particular about a trip he was on several years ago. It seems that during a storm, one young American high school student suddenly started leading basketball cheers. Then she began doing the hokeypokey with her boyfriend--who wasn't on the trip.

"What's the first thing you're going to say when you get home?" one woman asks another, interrupting the crew member's narrative.

"Oh, my God!"

"How many more days to go?"

"Nine...nine more days to go...nine more days...nine more. Nine."

That night, we sleep on the cement floor and on the iron cots. The John is a 16' x 20' room containing a seatless plugged toilet and a shower. The room's two doorways are covered with curtain shreds that stop halfway down the door frame. Instant constipation grips our group. In the darkness, people talk and moan in their sleep. It is the night of the living dead.

After a sandstorm, the desert air is so crisp and clear that it's almost effervescent. We continue north on what Saharans call reg, a smooth, hard sand lightly sprinkled with gravel. Rising out of the reg every half kilometer are balises, tall iron poles installed by the French to aid travelers in navigating this expanse of emptiness. The balises trail off to the horizon on an earth as flat as an iron.

The enormity of total nothingness plays tricks with our minds. Each balise is numbered and we see them rising from the shimmering blueness of a mirage like dock posts in a lake. Minitrek's drivers veer back and forth, racing one another, occasionally wandering into fech-fech--treacherous powdered sand that lies beneath a false crust. We stumble from the Land Rovers and perform our sand-ladder act. The will to survive is our impetus. Time means nothing. Only the balises. Slack-jawed and thirsty, our water rationed to ensure that no one surreptitiously takes a bath, days blend into nights and we bed down with our wise old eyes turned to the heavens praying for deliverance.

Somewhere in the desert, we cross over from Niger into Algeria and trade the balises for a road. The reg has turned to erg: huge, magnificent dunes that rise several hundred feet to a razor-sharp crest. At dusk, the sun's golden rays highlight each particle of sand like a diamond in a caliph's crown. It's the land of Beau Geste. In a few more days, we will arrive in Djanet, Algeria, that country's remotest oasis and the point where we must bid the Minitrek staff adieu and begin the long journey home (home?--the word can barely form on my sunburned lips), via Algiers, Paris and New York. But before we leave the Sahara, one more glorious adventure awaits our hearty band: a 45-mile, three-day hike up to the Tassili Plateau to see the prehistoric cave paintings there. This final side trip, according to the Lindblad brochure, "provides a fine climax to the expedition" and gives those who care to undergo it "a solid sense of achievement."

There is a great deal of apprehension in our group about this last rugged trek. Some of the older expeditioners, though eager to undertake the journey, are afraid they'll the trying. While the rest prostrate themselves in Djanet, 15 of us finally have a go at it. We return, three days later, weak-kneed and pounds lighter, walking like zombies, blisters on our heels the size of golf balls. We agree, as we soak our swollen feet in tubs of warm water, that if you've seen one painting of a Neanderthal chasing a herd of buffalo, you've seen them all.

• • •

The magic moment has arrived when we must leave the Sahara.

"Farewell, Minitrekers," I cry, as I limp up the steps of the once-a-week plane. "May the bird of paradise fly up your nose!"

We spend a rainy day and night in Algiers, eat ourselves sick on couscous and say goodbye to Herbie, who is now forgiven for getting us lost a million miles back down the road. His face, we notice, is healing nicely from the radiator incident.

And now--Paree! The sign in the lobby of the Hotel Orly Hilton reads Welcome Lindblad Travel Trans Sahara Expedition. Heads turn as we hobble through the swinging doors and approach the desk. You can feel the electricity in the air. "Les Sahariens!" a chambermaid whispers, ducking behind a bookrack. "Mon Dieu! Look at their eyes."

Dressed in the tatters of our expedition clothes, we march en mass to the bank of elevators, our chins high, our faces burned to the color of old hot-water bottles. An American tourist rushes up, the kind of parvenu who'd fly across French West Africa and then tell all his friends that he'd crossed the Sahara.

"How far'd ya go?" he gasps, noting that we're leaving a trail of sand.

"Thirty-one hundred miles," we chorus. It is a moment of triumph. We are living legends.

In my room, I turn on the tub's tap and throw my broken body into the water, drinking champagne straight from the bottle like a winner at Indy. No more midnight trots to the bush. No more cockleburs. My muscles are hard as camel's teeth. I feel terrific.

I climb from the tub, kick my expedition clothes into a bundle and order them to quick-march over to the door. Then I pick up the phone.

"Room service? I want one volunteer tout de suite to do some washing. She must be brave."

I never want to see another pith helmet. I never want to smell another Gauloises Bleu. I'm programed like Alex in A Clockwork Orange; just say the word sand and stand back, because I think I'm gonna throw up. All over Tuppy Bigelow. Are there Magic Fingers in my bed? No, but there is a TV set on the dresser. I turn it on and groove to the test pattern. Flip the channel selector and watch the images dance.

Across the hall, I can hear one of my fellow Saharans placing a long-distance call to somebody back home. "Hello, Jesse," she yells. "Yes, it's me. Yes, I'm still alive. Of course they had a toilet tent. I told you you should have come."