We flew into Laayoune, hired a big 4x4, and drove into the desert. There isn’t a lot of traffic on the long roads of the Western Sahara. Here and there the wind blows sand across the road, and every hour or so a military checkpoint waves you through and on you go. Other than these brief respites, it is a singularly monotonous trail. It’s hot, and when you stop to stretch, the heat is like a foundry furnace. We drove into the bright light of the desert, taking turns at the wheel. The landscape stretched away forever like a Martian plain, rock strewn and featureless, but flecked, surprisingly, here and there by spots of green. Tiny purple flowers bloomed along the roadside. And every now and again a stubborn tree held miraculously out against the hostility of the environment. Guelta Zemmur itself is a tiny oasis with a population of fewer than a hundred people and that’s where the road ends. It is a day’s drive. A soldier, assuming we were military, waved us through and we found ourselves at the Berm. We looked at it. Took no photographs. And drove back. Lunacy. Total lunacy. But one of the best trips ever.
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