In the Desert

This was my first ever beach holiday. No family. Just me and two friends. I don't generally go in for the typical brits on holiday experience, but it just sort of happened. Before I knew it we were drinking questionably sweet shots, in a room full of sweaty scantily clad English teenagers, singing along to 'Hotel, Motel, Holiday Inn'. No its actually worse than it sounds.

The first two weeks of my holiday can be summed up in four words: sun, sea, booze, hangover; with quasi-religious fervour we stayed within a hundred yard radius of our apartment. With two days left of our holiday, we suddenly decided we must do something different. We had to say we'd done something. So with very little money left we decided to go to the Black Beach.

First thing in the morning we headed to the taxi rank. We were stunned when the driver informed us it would cost a whopping 80 euros to get to there. We were hesitant, our usual resting spot was in sight, but we were motivated, we had our mission and we would not be so easily deterred.

Friend A had the idea that we could hire bikes and cycle there; we thought that this sounded like a great idea. We were wrong. The cycle-hire-man himself told us, in no uncertain terms, we would not make it in the midday heat. We were crestfallen.

But the cycle-hire-man did have a suggestion: the Bus.

The Bus. Why hadn't we thought of that? We know buses. We have buses at home. We ride buses all the time. We thought that we could handle the bus. We were wrong.

We got onto bus number 1, journeyed for twenty minutes and got off at the allocated changeover stop. No one else got off the bus. This was unsurprising really, as we had been dropped in the middle of the desert. I still do not understand why there was even a bus stop there at all.

Oh well, we think, the next bus is due in ten minutes. Wrong again. After checking the timetable we realise we actually have over an hour wait. Now I should say here that the only thing in sight, is a posh hotel, an unexpectedly posh hotel.

In the posh hotel, by an acerbic and disapproving receptionist (lets just say I've never been so aware of my attire) we were informed that we had disembarked at the wrong stop and need to be one stop over. This is not too bad, we think. We'll walk to the next stop, we think. It's fine. We are wrong.

We walk and walk and walk and walk and walk through the desert, following an empty motorway. All we can see is tumbleweed and that weird haze that appears when it's really hot, you know the kind you see in movies that makes it look like there is water on tarmac?

I should also mention here that we were hungover, and we had perhaps 100ml of water between us.

Things were getting dire.

Friend A and Friend B were bickering.

It was so hot.

Headlines flashed before my eyes 'three British tourists die in desert' …

'three die in freak heatwave idiocy'

Then, out of nowhere, just as we were about to give up hope and curl up and await death in a suitably overdramatic fashion, we happened upon a miracle. And no I do not think that is too grandiose a term given the circumstances.

We happened upon a ranch n the middle of the desert. A Ranch, with camels, horses, and most importantly a bar. A bemused bar tender, wondering where we had come from (presumably no one ever arrived here without a vehicle) served us cold drinks and ordered us a taxi.

Determined for this journey not to have been in vain we took the taxi to the Black Beach.

We made it, some six or seven hours later, we made it; although it still cost us 80 euros in the cab...