Rain. And not expecting the expected. By Pearl

We left for the Sahara last Friday. On a bus.

Everyone was excited.

This was a defining moment for me, the pinnacle of my (extraordinarily minimal) exotic travels. Coming from Washington State I’m used to the rain -  it would be with only slight exaggeration that I claim to sometimes forgetting what the sun feels like.

Sahara however means desert (in Arabic, ‘Sahara’ is translated as the literal noun). It doesn’t get much more promising than that – this was as far away from home as I could get.

And we drove ten hours, and it took two days, and we visited several places, and petted monkeys, and danced to drums, and ate tajine and drank tea – we bought turbans.

Around 6 o’clock we pull into our ‘final destination’ – the official Sahara, sand dunes and saddled camels and the whole cha-bang. We were packed into  4x4s, 6 of us to a car. We sat there waiting to buy water. Hot, exhausted, and slightly nauseous. I was looking out the window, watching Ryan standing outside in his pink shirt. And then he looked up at the sky. And then I saw him look back at us through the dusty car window. And then he looked up at the sky.

And then it started RAINING.

And we sat there in the car, packed liked sardines and wrapped in sweaty headscarves. Two boys on a broken bicycle pulled up beside the car, soaking wet and laughing. And looking at us and laughing.

And our dear sweet mother Nabeela, who may not have slept the previous night due to circumstances very much in our control, cried out in a comically exhausted hysteria – “Is it actually raining!?”

And I just laughed and laughed and laughed. We were rocking that overcrowded van we were laughing so hard. And the boys outside were watching us and laughing. And it was raining. And there was thunder and lightning. And I was crying I was laughing so hard.

And that was the start to our trip in the Sahara.

It was pretty fun.