Chapter 6C

Music: On the Road Again by Willy Neslon and Country Roads by John Denver

Chapter 6 – The Land of a Thousand Horrors

Previous – Chapter 6C – Next

Horror Three

•••••

As the cheese was brought out, things took a turn for the worse, for the Commissioner made a request we had somehow to refuse. “I wish,” he said, “I wish to buy that girl from you.” He pointed to Barbara, blonde and chesty and glowing. I didn’t blame the Commissioner a bit, but we had to get out of it-and without offending him, for a man who’d killed fifteen French during the war with guns and plastique wasn’t going to think twice if insulted by an American.

“How much will you pay for her?” I asked, following the custom.

“How much do you wish?” he countered, and I could see we were in for some Arab haggling.

Barbara had stopped glowing. I asked the Commissioner what he thought was a fair price, and he offered fifteen hundred American dollars, in either cash or gold.

“Well, that’s very generous,” I answered, “but only for an average girl. It’s not enough for her. Barbara here’s an exception.” Exceptionally pale at the moment, I noticed.

“How much do you want?”

“Well, we just couldn’t part with her for less than $3,000. I mean she’s no ordinary girl: lovely hair, nursing skills, nice disposition, and-“

“-and lots of meat,” the Commissioner smirked, a bit of spittle driveling into his dish of couscous. ”All right, I give you $2,000. It’s too much for her, but since you’re my good friend, I’ll give it to you.”

”I’m sorry, but we just couldn’t take less than $3,000, even from a good friend like you. We turned down $2,700 for her in Marrekesh from the Sultan. We have to send half the money to her mother.”

“You do not bargain, Mr. Stephens.”

“Three thousand dollars is a bargain for a girl like Barbara.”

”As you wish. All right. I take her.”

We were astounded. My trick had backfired. I couldn’t conceive of anybody paying $3,000 for a woman outside of divorce court, but there it was. Barbara looked about ready to faint, and the veiled wives were already giving her the Cinderella look when Al cut in.

“But there’s one thing Mr. Stephens forgot to mention, Commissioner. You see, we had planned to sell these girls as a group. They all go together. But since you are our friend, you can have the other two at a big discount, only $2,000 each, $7,000 for all three.”

“No, I do not want the other two. They are too skinny. Look,” he said, pinching Liz, who screamed, “No meat. All bones. I could not even get $200 for her from the nomads. I only want the other one.”

“But you see-well you see-we have to sell them together. The one you want is the prize of the flock and we need her to help us sell these other two miserable ones. Nobody will buy these scrawny chickens otherwise. Come on, special for you, as our friend, only $7,000 for all three.”

“No, no deal.”

And with a sigh of relief we moved on to Algiers, the girls sitting in the back of the Land Cruiser singing at the cop of their lungs, “Maori Battalion march co victory, Maori Battalion staunch and true, Maori Battalion march to glory…”

Algiers buzzed with all sorts of activity, none of it particularly conducive to a pleasant visit. Under Ben Bella, Algiers had become a center of anti-American propaganda and policies. All across Africa we’d picked up its radio programs denouncing Americans as “imperialists, exploiters, fascists, and colonialists.” The city was plastered with signs and billboards extolling sacrifice, praising Socialism, lauding Nasser, saluting the Soviets, thanking Red China, and damning the United States. Ben Bella had opened Algiers to international revolutionary groups, and its streets were filled with young toughs from organizations like the Mozambique Liberation Front or the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola. It was a den of seedy dragons.

Behind the flags and slogans we detected unrest and discontent. High prices, low wages, half-empty stomachs, and disillusionment were everywhere. Everywhere also were guns and barbed wire; Ben Bella’s palace was a fort surrounded by concrete tank traps and a high wall manned by half a hundred troops with ugly Chinese machine guns.

We search d for the pretty campsites of the tourist folder, but they were also victims of the war which had despoiled the entire Mediterranean coast around Algiers with barbed wire, watchtowers, and mine fields; we were forced to drive twenty miles until we found a clear beach. There we pitched our camper and rushed for the water, eager to wash off the dirt and sweat of a week of driving. I plunged in first-and screamed for the others to stop. The water was alive with leeches, wriggling, slimy, ugly leeches, eight inches long-thousands of filthy, black bloodsuckers. The others ran out immediately, but I was in so far that by the time I made it back to shore there were two leeches clinging to my legs and another, big as a banana, sucking blood from my back. Al pulled them off and cleansed the wounds. We sank back to the camper, utterly dejected.

Later that night we sat around the dismal campsite getting ready for the next long stretch to Cairo. I was studying the maps, Al was editing photos for the sponsors, and Woodrow was computing our expenses. Willy and Manu had gone into town to eat at a restaurant, and the girls were packing their knapsacks, getting ready to head back home the next day. Miles across the bay, the lights of Algiers beamed steady in the clear air, but everywhere else around us was absolute darkness, broken only by the glow of our hissing gas lanterns.

Suddenly Woodrow was screaming and jumping and holding his neck. Something had bitten him hard, and blood was oozing from the wound. But what? What kind of animal would slash a man on a North African beach without being seen? As I was wondering about this and helping Al bandage Woodrow’s wound, I heard a faint warning buzz about ten yards away, like a rattlesnake, but lower in pitch.

I turned toward the sound and saw a blur of black leap from the beach at my head. It caromed off the gas lantern, and vanished. It was terrifying. On our trip we would run into everything from bull elephants in heat to tarantulas in our trousers, but we had no idea what in the world was after us then, and there’s nothing more frightening than the unknown.

We waited, tense and sweating. Two minutes, five, ten. Then another black buzz jumped at us. It grazed me on the chest and I swatted it to the beach and pinned it with my boot. It was one of the most disgusting creatures I’ve ever seen, looking more like a monster from the laboratory of some warped scientist than any creature of Nature. It was about five inches across, dark chocolate brown in color, with big front pincers and several sets of smaller side legs. It had the general shape of a crab, the hairy appearance of a spider, and some sort of rear wings that enabled it to fly or spring about five feet in the air and twenty feet forward. And it died hard: I smashed the one at my foot ten times with an entrenching tool before it was finally stilled.

Our flashlights showed the beach was crawling with these things, but not before one of them jumped and nipped my hand. It was apparent that they were attracted by light and converging on our campsite, so we extinguished our lanterns and sat in the dark until it was time to go to sleep and dream of mine fields and leeches and flying monsters. The next morning brought no relief for with it came mobs of unwashed, unruly Arab kids, all curious to see these strange foreigners who were living on the beach, and all with a touch of larceny in their hearts. With two cars and two trailers loaded with gear we had such a full time keeping an eye on things that we had to congratulate ourselves when we took inventory that evening and found we’d only lost a can opener and a stack of paper plates.

Previous – Chapter 6C – Next

Chapter 6B

Music: On the Road Again by Willy Neslon and Country Roads by John Denver

Chapter 6 – The Land of a Thousand Horrors

Previous – Chapter 6B – Next

Horror 2

•••••

Al was leading in the Land Cruiser and I was following in the Jeep, when a blue Citroen passed me doing at least 80 miles an hour on the narrow road, swaying all over the place, cutting in ahead of me just in time to avoid smashing a car coming from the other direction. At the outskirts of a little village he started to pass Al, then turned to cut perpendicularly in front of him, heading for a certain collision. Al yanked the wheel violently and smashed the brakes to bring the car and camper to a miraculous, slithering stop half an inch from the crazy Citroen. I never thought he’d make it; the Citroen seemed bent on suicide.

Al and the girls tore out of the Land Cruiser, raging at the Citroen.

The Citroen responded in French with a string of curses. Al yelled, “Where the hell did you get your license-in a box of Crackerjacks?”

The girls let loose with some New Zealand broadsides. And even normally complacent Manu came up with a barrage that culminated with “Me cago en la cocina de tu madre!” The Citroen retorted, “May a pig die on the grave of your grandmother!”

Everyone in the village was on the road, a crowd of about 40 Arabs to whom it had to be obvious from the position of the cars that the Citroen was recklessly at fault, yet all of them took his side, as if they were afraid not to-even those who had actually seen him run Al off the road. A woman came running out of the house into whose courtyard the Citroen had been turning. She was waving a broomstick, screaming in French, “Go away! Go away, foreigners. Always foreigners.  Always making trouble.  Leave my husband alone!”

But Al wasn’t having it. “Let me see your license,” he demanded. The Citroen’s mouth fell open in shock, but he didn’t budge.

“I said show me your license,” Al shouted, moving in on him.

“There, that is my license,” the Citroen shot back in French, pulling a card out of his pocket.

“This isn’t a driver’s license, and you know it,” Al barked, as I caught a flash of a card that said “Ministry of Public Works” on the top. “All this probably says is you dig sewers or haul shit away. It’s a very fitting card for you, I’m sure, but I want to see your driver’s license. I’ll see to it you never drive again.”

The Citroen spat on the ground.

“OK, Frenchie, if that’s the way you want it, that’s the way you’ll get it.” Al walked behind his car and took down the license number.

That did it. The Citroen flew into a speechless rage. He ran at Al.  Al pulled back to hit him. Willy kicked him in the leg. The crowd started to move in. I jumped in to break up the fight. I couldn’t understand why the Citroen hadn’t just made a polite apology in the first place to get rid of us; but he was in no mood to apologize now, and we couldn’t take on the whole village, so I pushed Al and Willy into the Land Cruiser. As we pulled away, Al yelled at the driver, “Just wait, buddy, I got your number and I’ll see that the authorities in Algiers hear about this!” The girls in the back seat merrily stuck out their tongues.

That had happened in Picard, and two hours later we were 40 miles east of there looking for a spot to camp for the night, the winding cliff road with its rickety bridges and washed out sections having proved too dangerous for anything but daylight driving. As we were looking, a blue Citroen came thundering over the hill behind us, hooting the horn, careening and swaying all over the road. But not until the car cut in front of us did I realize it was the same motorized menace we’d clashed with in Picard, this time with two uniformed policemen in the rear seat.

For ten minutes the words flew hot and heavy. Al and the Citroen took swings at each other, bur their words did more damage. The police, slightly embarrassed, but obviously on the Citroen’s side, stood off a bit, holsters unbuttoned. Little by little, the truth began to emerge: the Citroen was a very important chap, Bendauche Muhamed, the Police Commissioner for the entire district. 1 be card he’d shown Al from the Ministry of Public Works didn’t authorize him to dig sewers, but to arrest people, a job he’d won by being a guerrilla leader in the war against the French.

From a quiet conversation with the policemen, I filled in the rest of the situation: The Commissioner was an extremely bad driver whose speeding and recklessness were notorious through the district, though they were politely ignored in deference to his position. But we had called attention to them. We had demanded to see his license, taken his plate number, called him a Frenchman and a lot of things less printable, and threatened to report him to Algiers. The only way the Commissioner could regain his village’s respect was to bring us back to admit that we were wrong.

But we had no intention of backtracking to Picard; we’d had enough Algerian delays already, as I told the Commissioner. “As you wish,” he said, “but let us have some wine and discuss this, I know a cafe not far from here. Come, Mr. Stephens, come with me, and your friends can follow.” I suspected a trick, but had little choice when the policemen seconded the motion.

Not without misgivings, I got into the Citroen. The Commissioner roared off in a cloud of dust, racing back the way we’d come, wobbling on the wrong side of the road, careening along the twisting, potholed asphalt, honking madly, scaring bicyclists and pedestrians, forcing oncoming cars onto the side. More than once I thought for sure we’d had it, but the blue Citroen was known and feared by all, and neither man nor beast stood in its way; even the trees seemed to lean away when they saw us coming.

“You see, Mr. Stephens, your friend was wrong,” the commissioner boasted. “I drive very well, don’t I?” My mouth was too dry to answer. In forty minutes we were back in Picard. The Land Cruiser and Jeep took another hour to make it.

The village was dark and no one was about; the commissioner’s plan was foiled, so he drove us down to the beach and told us to camp for the night, posting the two policemen to stand guard “to protect you from robbers.” The police built a roaring bonfire over which the girls boiled coup and heated tins of meat; the Commissioner contributed a five-gallon jug of wine. We were all friends now, and the commissioner was happy. He showed us a postcard of New York which a nephew had sent, and asked if we had ever been there. H told us how he had blown a train up with plastique during the revolution, and how he had killed fifteen French himself He pulled out his gun and fired three shots into the night for effect. He drank until the wine ran down his cheeks. He chased Barbara around the campfire, trying in vain to drag her into the bushes, as we wondered how to limit our hospitality without giving offense. He sang bawdy French songs and roared with laughter when we played him back the cape recording. He left well after 3: 00 A.M., instructing the police to bring us to his home for a banquet at noon. He got into his Citroen and blasted off in a shower of sand, knocking down a small tree as he beat a path back to the road.

At noon, the policemen escorted us to the Commissioner’s courtyard, adjacent to the scene of the near-tragic collision the day before. The Commissioner was at the gate to greet us, the forgiving father extending a gracious welcome to his erring children. He had arranged things well: half the villagers of Picard were gathered outside to see their hero accepting the apologies of the repentant foreigners for their reckless words and driving of the day before. The Commissioner was beaming so happily that we went along with the ruse to keep the peace. The meal was magnificent. Although the Commissioner spent most of it joking with his brother about what had happened the day before -” … and that one there, the mean- looking one, Podell, he thought I was French. Can you imagine, French! He said people who drove like me only got their licenses in Paris, and … “-we never wanted for attention from the brother’s four veiled wives who clucked over us, keeping our plates and glasses full.

Previous – Chapter 6B – Next

Chapter 6A

Music: On the Road Again by Willy Neslon and Country Roads by John Denver

Chapter 6 – The Land of a Thousand Horrors

Previous – Chapter 6A – Next

Horror Upon Entry

•••••

”What is New Zealand?” “What do you mean, what is New Zealand?” Mira shot back.

“I mean what is New Zealand?” the Algerian passport officer repeated.

“It’s a country. What do you think it is? It’s a country just like yours -only better,” she added under her breath.

“There is no such country on our list. It is perhaps part of America?”

“No, it’s not part of America, never was and never will be,” Barbara cut in. “It’s part of the British Common-wealth. It’s in the South Pacific, near Australia.”

“I have never heard of it. You must go back to Rabat and apply for a visa.”

”Apply for a visa?” Mira shouted.

“Go back to Rabat?” Barbara gasped.

I cut in and explained that the girls had been told by the Algerian Consulate in Rabat that they wouldn’t need visas because New Zealand was part of the British Commonwealth and that British subjects could enter Algeria without visas.

“This is not a British passport,” the guard answered. “These women must go back to Rabat for visas.”

And so it went on for three hours. The guard wasn’t going to let anybody in from a country he’d never heard of, and we’d be damned if we’d recross the breadth of Morocco.

A compromise was finally reached: The guard gave the girls a temporary entry visa, good for 72 hours, and they had to report to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Algiers and explain their case within that time limit or they would be put in jail.

Exhausted from the hour and the ride-which from Fez had been through barren lands and mountains, and during which we’d had to labor for three hours repairing new breaks in the trailer’s undercarriage-we decided to camp at the first clear spot we came to. The border area was a mess of armed soldiers, concrete tank traps, and barbed wire, but a little beyond we found a hard-caked field and pulled off into it, pitching our camper and tent about forty yards from the road. We were asleep in seconds.

”Attention! Attention!”  A voice was shouting at us in French through a megaphone. It was early morning and I rubbed the sleep out of my eyes.

“Defense d’allez! Defensed’allezl” The voice belonged to an Algerian Army officer up on the road.

Willy blanched: “He says we shouldn’t move. He says we’re in the middle of a mine field!”

“Mine field? I thought they’d gotten rid of those by now ” Al exclaimed.

“Got rid of what?” asked Woodrow, just waking up. “The mines. I edited a story about them at Argosy.” AI explained that about 15,000,000 mines had been laid throughout Algeria, mostly by the rebels to blow up French troops and equipment during the war for independence, some to prevent attack from Morocco. And after the war they didn’t even remember where they’d put a lot of them. They’d managed to dig up about half, but of the 7,000,000 left, a few were somewhere under, around, or in front of us.

“What does he say we should do?” I asked Willy, who was translating.

After several shouted exchanges: “He says we should stay here. He has no mine detector. He says in four or five days the mine expert is due back in this part of the country. He also says we’re a bunch of stupid fools to ignore all the warnings.” Far down the road a tiny sign winked at us in the morning sun.

A four-day delay would be intolerable and unsafe. The girls were afraid to try to leave, but I reminded them they’d be in jail if we didn’t.

The safest and surest way to get out was probably the way we’d gotten in, but it was impossible to find our tire tracks in the hard packed sand; so I decided to try an old trick I’d learned in the Marines. I took one of our arrows and to it tied a long piece of string, tied the string to a strong piece of cord, and attached the cord to the winch cable on our car. I shot the arrow onto the road, where the officer hauled in on the string and the cord and the winch cable until he had enough to work with.

Following our shouted instructions, the officer found a big boulder, about 80 pounds. With the help of several nomads who’d stopped to see the harib get blown up, he rolled it to the road and hooked the end of the winch wire around it. When I started the engine to activate the winch, the others took shelter beneath the camper, but I had to stay up front, my foot on the pedals, hauling in the improvised mine sweeper. The big boulder came tumbling and dragging along the ground, certain to detonate any mine in its path, and if the mine happened to be close to the car-I forced myself not to think of it, forced my mind back to thoughts of Kublai Khan and Marco Polo and the days when they didn’t have mined frontiers. With a solid clink the boulder hit the bumper. The path was clear.

But was it really? The boulder had certainly swept a path big enough for a pedestrian, but was it wide enough for the car and camper? We couldn’t take that risk, so the others walked to the road, marching one at a time along the narrow pathway. Al went last, carrying the winch wire which, on reaching the road, he hooked up to another big boulder that I planned to drag along a path parallel to the first. It was about halfway home when it hit a mine. The world erupted. My ears went deaf with the blast. The car seemed to leap straight up. Pieces of rock and dirt exploded skyward and settled over the car. But that was all. I was unharmed, the car was running, the path was cleared, and the Trans World Record Expedition was back on the road.

There was little to like about Algeria except the scenery. Prices were ridiculous: gasoline was a dollar a gallon, the highest we paid anywhere in the world; they wanted two dollars for a chicken, which in Morocco had cost forty cents; everything was three, four, or five times costlier than anywhere else in North Africa. It took hours to find a place to exchange money; no one accepted our Moroccan money, and even for dollars they offered an unfairly low rate. When Manu bought a bottle of Algerian red wine, world famous before independence, it was terrible. The farms we passed were without vigor. The Algerians had expropriated 22,000 farms when they drove out the French settlers, turning them into 2,284 “socialist production units,” operated by the state in an experiment that turned out to be a disaster. Lacking the skilled managers to run them successfully, supervised by heroes of the guerrilla war who had no inclination for farm life, and worked by men who had little incentive for doing a good job, the farms had come on bad times and food prices were soaring throughout the country. Though once Algeria had earned abundant foreign exchange by selling its surplus wine, olives, citrus and wheat abroad, it was now faced with an agricultural deficit in the millions. Discontent was widespread. Every 50 miles or so, a soldier behind a machine gun roadblock checked our passports and destination. But the scenery was another matter. At Oran we hit the Mediterranean coast and drove for hours through breathtaking beauty along a cliff road overlooking the sea; every twist and turn brought with it a more magnificent view. Five hundred feet below us were virgin beaches, quiet coves, thick forests of fir trees down to the water’s edge, sleepy fishing villages-the shining sands of the Costa del Sol, massive red rocks of the Riviera, wooded islands of Greece, soaring seaside cliffs of Big Sur-caves and jetties and dunes and bays, inlets and streams and waterfalls and ponds, almost every gift in Nature’s cornucopia of beauty.

Previous – Chapter 6A – Next

Chapter 5E

Music: On the Road Again by Willy Neslon and Country Roads by John Denver

Previous – Chapter 5E – Next

More Delays, Enjoying Hospitality

•••••

Bad news met us in Rabat: the Algerian Embassy wanted 48 hours to process our visa applications. The girls, however, got a break; they were told that, as members of the British Commonwealth, they didn’t need visas. We should have such luck. Another two days wasted.

From Rabat, after a brisk morning swim in the Atlantic, which we weren’t to see again for longer than any of us dreamed, we headed east toward Algeria, visas in our pockets and a wind at our back. The land we crossed, lying between the Rif and the still snow-covered Middle Atlas Mountains, and watered by their abundant runoff, was fertile and thick with waving fields of cereal grain and dark patches of vegetables. Bright birds darted before us, and the farmers waved as we passed.

Evening found us on the outskirts of Meknes, the descending un reflected brilliantly off the enameled tiles at the arched entrance to the casbah.

Meknes is Morocco’s largest interior city. Beyond the casbah it is ultra-modern, thriving, commercial, with hotels of Miami Beach Gothic and apartments of imitation Mies Van der R he towering over the massive medina walls, updating its centuries-old reputation as a gaudy architectural showplace, a reputation first established during the reign of Sultan Mulay Ishmail who sought to turn the city into an Arab Versailles-though it’s difficult to see where he found the time with 4,000 worn n in his harem and 876 children to his credit.

  • Photo caption on page 76 of the printed publication:
    Our first gas station in Africa, one of more than 200 where we refilled on our 42,500-mile journey around the world.

Meknes also had the last official campsite in Africa; after it, save for a thin strip along the coast, lay the barren, inhospitable North Africa of endless deserts. But when we reached the campsite, we found that the annual Meknes Fair had just begun, and the camp grounds were taken over with rides, amusements, food shops, Coca-Cola stands, farm equipment displays, livestock exhibits, and booths where the uses of fertilizer and the findings of meteorology were explained. It could have been a state fair in Kansas or Idaho, except for the big display of Russian tractors and the shop handing out Red Chinese propaganda to the dark-skinned men wearing turbans and fezzes. When we explained our problem to the director of the Fair, he apologized and listed five or ten good reasons why we couldn’t camp there while the Fair was in progress-then threw them all away and invited us to stay. He cleared a spot for our tents, saw that they were protected by guards, arranged for us to come and go freely and, to top everything off, asked us to be his special guests at the opening banquet the next afternoon, the first Americans, he said, ever to be so honored.

We slept that night with our camper almost lost beside huge black goatskin tents in a maze of stake ropes as thick as an arm. We were awakened early by the fearsome bleating of a hundred sheep being slaughtered, literally on our doorstep, before being roasted on giant outdoor spits in preparation for the banquet.

The feast began shortly after midday, and we’d all skipped breakfast in anticipation. A troop of Moroccan soldiers arrived to escort us-dressed in our best, with the girls clean-scrubbed and shining-to one of the huge tents where we were eared on immense bright-colored silk pillows heaped around short tables, beside which sat scores of men- mostly in native costume, with a few government officials and businessmen in Western dress-all laughing and joking and shoveling food in with their hands. The girls hesitated a moment searching the sea of chewing faces in vain for other females.

A hundred waiters served us, and a hundred servings they brought: giant oval loaves of rye bread, still warm from the oven; huge, heaping platters of pastry stuffed with a mouth-watering mixture of chopped pigeon, scrambled eggs, brown sugar and strange spices; and lambs, whole roasted lambs, fresh and young and dripping with sweet juices; and platters of baked whole chickens covered with curry sauce.

Our Moroccan hosts ate with their fingers, tearing huge hunk of meat apart with their teeth. They shouted at the waiter for more, and grabbed meat from the platters, swallowing in gulps and tossing bones and scraps on the sawdusted ground or over their heads or out the sides of the tent with complete abandon. They ate for the sheer joy of eating, and it was a wonder to watch them. They ate as if it were their last meal on earth; they ate until their stomachs seemed about to burst-and when plates of fruit arrived they gorged themselves again.

The host at my cushion collection was the chief of the Moroccan army, a commanding young general who stuffed me like a howitzer. He yelled at every waiter to put more food on my plate, though it was always full. From one passing waiter, the general grabbed half a lamb and plopped it down on our table, showering it with salt and spice. By the time I finished my end of the lamb, I never wanted to eat again, but then they brought out the poultry, and the general smilingly threw me a whole chicken, curry sauce flying all over. He kept breaking off choice pieces of other chickens and throwing them to me across the table; as soon as I finished one piece, two more came ailing into my lap. I joined the Moroccans in tossing the bones out of the tent, but as the onslaught continued I found myself throwing whole chicken legs out the sides, even burying pieces of meat in the sand with my foot. And everybody else was still going strong. What a meal. When the food finally stopped everyone reclined on the pillows and smoked strong cigarettes and the Arabs told their favorite stories; the air beneath the goatskins was heavy with smoke and laughter and peptic rumbles of approval.

Stuffed beyond belief, we piled into the Toyota for a quick visit to Mulay Idris, a town less than an hour from Meknes, yet centuries distant, a vast medina undisturbed by the progress of the past thousand years. Named for the disciple of Mohammed who brought the Moslem religion to Morocco, the town retains his religious fervor to such an extent that non-Moslems are absolutely forbidden to remain within its walls after nightfall. If we tried to stay in Mulay Idris after dark, we were warned at the Fair, some fanatic mullah would be sure to lead an attack on us; it was bad enough, we were told, going there with unveiled women.

A girl just doesn’t go unveiled in any small town or inland city of North Africa, and it is only in the big coastal cities, such as Tangier, Tunis, Casablanca, and Bizerte, which have been exposed to a hundred years of French influence, and where the women have developed European attitudes, that many have abandoned the veil completely, though most retain it in modified form. Whereas their inland sisters wear shapeless sacks of thick white cotton through which nothing shows but shadowy eye holes, the young Moslem women of the big cities wear form-fitting tunics in attractive shades of pink and blue silk, high-heel shoes, and the thinnest of gossamer veils, just barely covering the nose and lips, and leaving the eyes-which are strikingly outlined with makeup-fully exposed, thus following the letter, though certainly not the spirit, of the Moslem custom. They wield their veils in the same devastatingly effective way that a Lima lady flirts behind her lace abanico or a Hong Kong girl coquettes with her bamboo fan. Inland, however, the women dare not flirt or look attractive to any but their husbands, and the farther east we traveled the truer we found this.

As we gaped at the veiled women scurrying out of our sight, we were conscious of the men of Mulay Idris regarding us with equal attention-though much less affection. Except for an old, one-armed man who offered to guard our car for a dirham, no one greeted us-a sharp contrast to the other Moroccan towns where half the population turned out to bid us welcome. As we hiked up the steep, stepped streets of the town, we had the feeling that we were being watched from behind the thick wooden doors, that in every mosque fanatical men were hatching plots to doom the infidels. The only time anyone spoke to us was when we went too dose to a mosque. In Mulay Idris, as in all Morocco, it is strictly forbidden for a non-Moslem to enter a mosque, again a strange contrast to such bastions of the Arab world as Damascus and Cairo which bid the tourist welcome and are proud to display their mosques. When Willy tried to sneak into the courtyard of a mosque from which a strange chant was issuing, two guards caught him and roughed him up for his troubles. Only the little children smiled at us and posed for pictures and ate our candy-until their parents darted out of doorways to snatch them back before the heathens contaminated them. In 20 years they will probably treat their children the same way. Never have I felt so unwanted and unloved by my fellow men.

That afternoon, we resolved to learn more about Islam, for its hold on its followers and its potential as a world force were more than we had imagined. Six hundred million people, a quarter of the world’s population, live under its awesome power, cut off by their beliefs from the other three-quarters, taught that theirs is the only true way to worship God. A careful reading of their Koran shows they can never accept compromise or coexistence with other religions; only capitulation and conversion. We had always tried to regard religions as benign philosophical systems, each trying, in its own way, to prescribe the means of adherence to a higher law of truth and decency, to control man’s baser impulses, to make for a better life on earth and beyond; but that afternoon at Mulay Idris changed all that, making us feel to the core of our bones that dark forces were at work, that a religion could become the most evil of influences.

We had been told in Meknes that one foreigner lived in Mulay Idris, an American professor who had converted to Islam and been granted a special dispensation to make his home there. Al was eager to meet him, feeling that it would be interesting material for our articles. But I couldn’t bring myself to disturb him. I knew that some powerful force must have driven him to Mulay Idris, and I was sure he wouldn’t want visitors from home, or intrusions like ours. But what things he must have seen, what tales he could tell-and maybe he will, some day.

On the way back to our camp at Meknes, we passed the ruins of Volubis, the westernmost major Roman city in Africa, an enduring witness to the six-century era when one nation ruled all of North Africa from the Atlantic to the Nile. Where, 1,600 years ago, 100,000 people had lived and worked in a magnificently planned and beautifully constructed city, today storks nest atop the decrowned columns and look down on a jungle of empty pedestals, a silent Forum, and Caracalla’s wobbly, weathered Arch of Triumph. Where once a proud Roman highway, lined with massive Doric columns, had run from Volubis to Tangier and the farthest reaches of the Granary of Rome, today a crumbled strip of uneven rock ends in a weed-filled field, and the columns beside it are no higher than tombstones.

That night the heavens opened. Thunder rumbled across the Tell and lightning flashed onto the mountain tops. And the rains came, pounding, soaking, drenching rains, our first since Spain-our last for 10,000 miles! The next day we were to cross the Middle Atlas through the Col de Touahar near the Taza gap and enter one of the world’s driest regions, an arid waste which, save for a thin strip along the Mediterranean and a few isolated oases, would stretch unbroken to the delta of the Nile. It was a region the rain gods seldom visited; so that night they came to say good-bye.

The road from Meknes led through Fez, the last city before the Taza gap, the last until the border, 150 miles away. Fez, like Mulay Idris and most of the interior cities of Morocco, is completely surrounded by a high wall built to protect it from the nomad tribes. From the outside it has little distinction, but behind the walls is a fairyland. A perpetual river meanders through the heart of the town, bringing bloom to flower gardens along its path, watering bougainvillea and citrus trees, and flowing past tiled public patios and benches where the weary or the pensive can relax. It’s a city for contemplation, founded by the Moslem proselytizer Mulay Idris. Six hundred years ago, after their expulsion from Spain, the most devout Islamic scholars flocked to it. In Fez they built the famed Karaouyn University, and today another dozen medersas cluster around it, teaching the’ gospel according to Mohammed along with differential calculus and international relations. Students from all over the Arab world come to Fez, where they live in magnificent dormitories-cool, tiled complexes of living rooms, patios, chapels, cloisters, and mosques. We talked one young student into showing us the housing facilities; but the classrooms were strictly forbidden, and we could only wonder what the descendants of the Moors were planning for the descendants of those who drove them back to Africa.

It was noon before we left Fez and stopped to cook, and we were all looking forward to the meal, our first since the big feast, and a special one in another way. In our tours of the market places, we’d always been discouraged by the meat, which, since the shops had neither refrigeration nor display cases, hung on hooks in the open air where it was literally covered with flies and by midday had a grayish, pockmarked appearance that was about as appetizing as turkey vomit. A few of the more enlightened butchers would perfunctorily cover their meat with swatches of cheesecloth, but this only seemed to give the flies a better foothold. That day, however, we thought we’d beaten the system by going to the casbah market early in the morning, right after it opened, and choosing the freshest, reddest piece of meat we could find before any flying competitors got to it.

We dug into our lunch, then stopped and stared across the table at each other in dismay, our faces contorted. The meat was so foul-smelling we had to hold our noses to get it into our mouths-where it slipped around like a ball of rancid grease. It was so slimy it couldn’t be chewed; it just squished between the teeth. It smelled and tasted almost like a camel. In fact, I realized it was a camel. I’d been compelled to live off the stuff for a wretched month when I’d crossed Afghanistan by caravan, and I swore I’d never forget the taste as long as I lived.

I went on to assure the others that camel meat was certainly edible, if hardly palatable, and that it would do them no permanent harm. They all said they believed me, but nonetheless half a dozen surprised Arabs found themselves getting a free lunch that afternoon from a slightly green group of harib.

We washed our hands, brushed our teeth, and bade au revoir to Morocco as we headed toward the border. Things were not going well. We were running out of wine, and ahead of us in Algeria was a mine field, a robbery, a revolution, an auto accident, and a breakdown in the desert.

Previous – Chapter 5E – Next

Chapter 5D

Music: On the Road Again by Willy Neslon and Country Roads by John Denver

Previous – Chapter 5D – Next

Shopping, More Fun in the Desert

•••••

By day the work tied us down, but by night we surrendered to the allure of the casbah, the old native section of Tangier, a fascinating labyrinth of ancient alleyways enclosed by a high wall and a fort. In our journey we would visit almost every major medina and casbah in the Arab world-at Rabat, Casablanca, Meknes, Fez, Tripoli, Algiers, Jerusalem, Damascus-but none so impressive as the casbah in Tangier. Here no electric bulbs impose their harsh tungsten shine, no auto fumes assault the air, no talking tubes drown the mellifluous chant of the street vendors. Here a thousand liquid tongues stir a broth of ancient Arabic, the throb of clay drums fills the night air with a solid pulse, and exotic spice and burning incense deluge the senses. Here barbers ply their trade at curbside by candlelight, tanners work the hides of goat and camel into delicate purse and rugged saddle; bearded, fat candy vendors doze unconcerned while thick swarms of bees and flies gorge on their honeyed wares. Glistening kebobs sizzle on outdoor braziers, the sweet smell of Moroccan mint tea hangs heavy in the air, and the faint bluish smoke of hashish curls in mysterious cuneiform behind the turbaned pipe smokers.

The market place supplies all the entertainment and education one could ask, as buyer and seller, their haggling skills honed by generations, slowly sip and puff and do the dance of the dirham. A candle is a penny, a can-opener two, a ball of twine three; a dollar is a night’s delight of bargaining and bickering.

Our bargaining ability was hampered by lack of both language and technique. We could do no more than ask the vendor to write on a piece of paper the price he wanted for an item that interested us, while pretending not to be really too interested, so that, whatever figure he wrote, we could look sufficiently outraged to cross it out and cut it in thirds, hoping to convince him that was as high as we were willing to go. After several blatant failures with this method, we managed to introduce a Western element into the process: competition, the heart of capitalism, the core of free enterprise, and the bane of our casbah shopkeepers. After establishing one vendor’s lowest price, we’d reject it with boisterous dissatisfaction, loudly and directly marching to the next man who carried the same merchandise, leaving no doubts in either’s mind about our motive, a trick to which the average Arab shopper, able to rely on his bargaining skill and restrained by his inbred politeness, would never have resorted. But resort to it we did, and prices fell before us. But we were still to learn that price wasn’t everything, as with my purchases, for example: a day drum and a colorful cotton bathrobe. The drum cracked in my lap the third time I played it, and as for the robe-

“What are you going to do with that dress?” Al asked. “It’s not a dress, stupid, it’s a robe, the kind you wear after a bath,” I retorted.

“If you wear that thing you’re going to have to take two baths-the second one to wash off the dye.”

I looked, and my fingers were already turning green and purple. So much for our noble endeavor to introduce the competitive spirit to the casbah. It was midnight, and time to quit.

The casbah by day and evening is a pageant of shoppers and sellers, but after the witching hour it’s a netherworld of mystery. The worn stone streets rang with our lonely steps as we sought to find a way out. There were only a few faint gas lanterns to guide us. The upper floors of the houses hung over the streets and alleys, turning them into a maze of dark tunnels. Arabs squatted on corners, bent but not asleep, eyes active under their hoods, watching, waiting. Cats were everywhere; not the scrawny, frightened alley cats of home, but the imperious feline queens with shiny fur, fat on casbah rats. Spoiled vegetables lay dumped along the streets, and here and there the contents of a chamber pot; an old man with a water cart was hosing the melange into the sewers. At one corner a man held another on the ground, beating him over the head with a boot; at another four young toughs lingered, just waiting.

When we reached our Land Cruiser, parked outside the walls near the Grand Sacco, the hubcaps were missing. If we had had another day we could probably have bought them back; the Moroccans say that if something disappears one day you’ll find it for sale in the casbah the next.

But we didn’t have the time. We had to go to Rabat, the Moroccan capital, to apply for new Algerian visas, because the ones we had obtained in Paris had expired, thanks to our delays in Spain. Though it had once been possible to get them at the Algerian border, they were no longer being issued there because of the strained relations between the two countries; we had to drive 200 miles out of our way to get them. I envied Marco Polo; he only had to detour for rivers and robbers.

It was the 15th of May when we left Tangier, far behind our schedule, which called for us to be in Teheran, a sixth of the world away. From Cherbourg we had taken 45 days to cover a distance for which our schedule allowed eleven. If we continued at the same pace, Al calculated, our ten-month journey would run to 40. We’d be on the road three and a half years!

  • Photo caption on page 72 of the printed publication:
    Steve recorded each day’s events in his journal here at a beach campsite near Rabat, Morocco. The small Thermos Pop-tent behind him is where the three hitchhiking New Zealand nurses slept-or tried to.

The road to Rabat, which was a smooth and well-banked highway of French construction-the last good stretch of asphalt we’d see in Africa-ran along the Atlantic coast and gave us a breathtaking view: the sea in great green swells rolled in to meet an endless beach upon which she crashed and foamed and released the mighty power nourished by an unbroken journey of five thousand miles. There was no horizon line, for the sky and sea blended into one; there was no time, no sign or scar of civilization, no living things save us and a few camels chewing salt grass on the beach.

We couldn’t reach Rabat by nightfall so we pulled off the road as evening came, into a palm-fringed clearing in the middle of a grape field. An Arab came out and introduced himself-Abdul Marrakchi, owner of 160 acres of vineyards, yet dressed like the poorest of his laborers and as work-stained as any of them-and welcomed us with plates of cooked liver and bottles of iced beer. Till the moon and his men were high, they sat around listening to Moroccan music on our radio, finished three packs of Salems and a bottle of Old Granddad, and told us stories of Morocco’s battles for independence. One of them even rolled up his trouser leg to display his war wounds. By the time they left, the girls were thoroughly frightened-far from home, in the middle of a grape field in Africa, with drunken Arabs all around, strange animal sounds in the night, and tales of war and bloodshed still fresh in their ears. Thus did I agree to break a basic rule of the expedition: that the girls slept alone in the Poptent and the men in the camper. I nobly gave in to their frightened entreaties and, despite much grumbling from Al and Manu, squeezed into their tent, the girls snuggling beside me.

I had just dozed of when I felt something crawling over the foot of my sleeping bag, moving toward Barbara. I had to warn her. I shook her gently and whispered in her ear, “Barbara, Barbara, don’t be alarmed, and don’t panic, but there’s some animal or something near the foot of your sleeping bag.”

Barbara stirred, but didn’t awaken. I nudged her gently again. “Barbara, Barbara, now listen. Easy. Don’t be alarmed, but there’s some kind of animal in the tent.” She rolled closer to me.

“Quit joshing, Steve. You’re a real card, you are. Go back to sleep.”

When the thing jumped on her she let out a scream that carried clear back to Tangier. She tried to spring to her feet, but her sleeping bag tripped her and she fell on top of me. Liz and Mira were awake now-alarmed, hysterical, screaming, “Help! Steve! There’s a bloody snake in the tent! Help! Help!” But Steve was in no position to help anybody. All three girl were upon me. I couldn’t get to my feet. I couldn’t get to my flashlight. And worse, I couldn’t even find my pants. Barbara and Mira were sitting on top of me, and Liz had her leg wrapped around my neck, all three of them hysterical and howling.

Finally I found the flashlight and flickered it on. There, at our feet, was the biggest, slimiest, fattest, ugliest toad I have ever seen, a foot across if he was an inch, rot-colored and wet and covered with lumps. Despite the girls’ hysteria, and their leg and arms which were wrapped around me every which way, I was able to catch the toad, unzip the flap, and throw him out of the tent, exclaiming, “Okay, okay, he’s gone. Now for God’s sake stop screaming.”

The girls settled down. Mira climbed back into her sleeping bag, and Liz returned my left arm, but Barbara was still frightened. “What if there are more of those buggers in here, Steve?” she asked.

‘I’m certain that was the only one,” I assured her, “but if it’ll make you happy I’ll shine the light around.” It hardly made her happy. On top of her knapsack, surveying the scene with moist, bulging eyes, was another toad-even bigger, slimier, fatter, and uglier than his predecessor. The girls screamed, all of them, one on top of the other, and all on top of me. Mira was trying to sit on my head, Liz was shinnying up me like a telephone pole, and Barbara was crying and jumping and scratching my back. They were absolutely out of control. When I finally caught the toad, I tossed him out of the tent-and there, rolling on the ground, clutching their stomachs with laughter, yelling, Au revoir, crapaud,” were Al and Manu. And I swear the damn toad nodded to them as he hopped off.

Ten minutes later all was calm and the girls settled down. ”After all, it was only a toad,” I’d pointed out, “and they can’t hurt you. There’s nothing to be afraid of.”

“You’re right,” Liz admitted. “We’re sorry we acted so silly, Steve. But those bloody frogs took us by surprise. We’re okay now. Let’s have a nip of wine for a nightcap and go back to bed. All right?” She reached for the wine bottle-and there was another toad, the granddaddy of them all, the biggest, slimiest, fattest, ugliest toad in Morocco. Liz screamed and dropped the bottle, spilling wine all over my sleeping bag. Then Barbara and Mira joined her, screeching at the top of their lungs and scrambling for footholds on my stomach. I pushed them off, grabbed my pants, and moved back into the camper. Al and Manu were still laughing when I walked by.

Previous – Chapter 5D – Next

Chapter 5C

Music: On the Road Again by Willy Neslon and Country Roads by John Denver

Previous – Chapter 5C – Next

Almost a Tragedy

•••••

After a sleepless night in the Land Cruiser, I was first in line at the Spanish customs shed by eleven. For an hour I waited impatiently while the guard wasted time, pretending to search the empty car. At the stroke of noon he lifted the barrier. I shot through the gate and roared along the road toward the city. In twelve minutes I was on the outskirts of Algeciras and could plainly see the harbor and our ferry steaming toward Africa. It was the first time Al had let me down. I’d be stuck in Spain for three or four days until the next ferry. Dejected, I drove to the pier to get the exact schedule.

A smart white ship was tied up to the pier, moored by one line, waiting to cast off It was a ferry. It was our ferry! A crowd was gathered near the vehicle ramp, and I drove straight for it, blowing my horn. When the crowd parted I saw our Jeep and camper stuck halfway up the ramp and Al beside them turning his pockets inside out. The captain was shouting frantically to a dozen sailors and wharf laborers pushing and pulling at the Jeep.

Al leaped down from the ramp and came running up to me with the ship’s angry first mace right beside him.

“I lost the key as we drove on,” he winked. “Let me have your spare.”

After I’d given it to him he turned to the officer and said, “You see, I told you our jefe had an extra key. Tell the captain we can sail now. All right, jefe, welcome aboard.”

Later, on deck, before I’d quite caught my breath, Al handed me a big paper bag.

“What’s this?” I asked. “Tranquilizers?”

“On the contrary, very untranquilizing. Open it.”

I did. It was filled with money, Spanish money. The customs officials had refunded our $1,750 in Spanish pesetas- which were about as useful as subway tokens in Alaska.

“What can we do with this junk?” I asked.

“Well I’ve been checking around,” Al answered, “and if there’s one thing Tangier has it’s a red-hot black market in Spanish money. Those wise guys aren’t getting any last laugh on the Trans World Record Expedition.”

The trip across the Straits was over before we knew it. In 90 minutes we had traveled fifteen miles and a thousand years into a world of veiled women and turbaned men, mosques and minarets, camels and caravans. Gone were the heady orange scents of Valencia and the flamenco beat of the caves of Old Madrid, replaced by the musky smells and haunting rhythms of Africa. Gone, too, I hoped, were the problems that had plagued us so far.

From Cueta to Tangier the map shows 25 miles, but it’s 65 if you have to drive it, for between the two lies the tip of the Tell, with peaks of the Ev Rif rising to 8,000 and 10,000 feet above the fields of wheat and grapes. Our heavily laden cars lumbered up the mountain, every space jammed with gear and supplies, water cans and wine bottles in wicker baskets hanging on the sides of the vehicles, gas cans strapped to the front of the trailer, and our six new tires lashed to the top. The pace was slow, but the girls sang merrily, for we were back on the road and into our second continent. They sang, little realizing what dangers and disasters lay ahead.

As we climbed a particularly steep stretch, about a thousand feet above the sea, with me leading in the Land Cruiser and hauling the camper, and Al following in the Jeep, I felt a sudden lurch forward, an instant lightening of the load. I jerked around to see a shower of sparks behind me. The trailer hitch had snapped. The camper had broken loose and was careening down the mountain road. Six thousand dollars’ worth of trailer and supplies was hurtling to certain destruction on the rocks below.

Al, about 40 feet behind me, had also seen the sparks and the wild camper, and throwing the Jeep into low gear, rammed into the rear of the trailer just before it reached the edge. The Jeep was knocked back with the blow, almost going over the edge itself. Everything was safe, with only a few bumper scars to give evidence of what could have been a tragedy.

It took two hours to put on a spare hitch and replace the snapped safety chains, so it was dark when we got to Tangier and met Woodrow and Willy. We wanted to find the campground but there were few people about at that hour, and those who were couldn’t seem to understand what we wanted. In desperation, after a succession of Arabs had greeted our questions with pleasant smiles but shrugged shoulders, we dragged our small tent out of the trailer and set it up in the street, then launched into a charade on going to sleep. We finally made ourselves understood, and two boys volunteered to show us the way to the campground. We followed them down a wide avenue and along the edge of the bay to a sheltered hollow of grass and sand near the beach. But our guides had misunderstood.

Not that the spot wasn’t a campsite, for it certainly was, though the tents were so filthy it was almost impossible to make them out in the dark. But they didn’t belong to any tourists. It was a gypsy encampment. The gypsies eyed us suspiciously at first, but after appraising the value of our equipment and the vigor of our three rather frightened females, they beckoned us to pitch out tents and join the family. We declined the offer, and eventually found our way to the official campsite, a secluded spot high on a lush green hill overlooking the ocean, a few hundred yards from a little-used beach. The hill was thick with palm and pepper trees, fragrant purple bougainvillea and rich red poinsettia. There was no sound save the pounding of the distant surf and the call of unfamiliar insects, no light save the brilliant points of starshine overhead. It was a world of our own in the middle of a world far from our own.

Our hill was said to be the tomb of the mythological giant Antaeus whom Hercules had slain. Other killings in the vicinity had not been so mythological, for all around Tangier are the ruins of Phoenician, Carthaginian, Roman and Arab colonies, as they destroyed and succeeded one another, to be followed in turn by warring Portuguese, conquering Spaniards, colonizing English, reconquering Arabs, pirating Corsairs, bombarding Spaniards, and besieging French.

Only in the past century, when it was proclaimed an international city, did relative peace come to Tangier, for the major powers watched jealously lest any one become too powerful there. During the last war it became a center of international intrigue and espionage; after that, a gold trading center; today, capitalizing on its proximity to Europe, a pleasant den of vice where, for a price, any desire can be accommodated, whether it demands gold bars, male prostitutes, raw opium, aphrodisiacs, poisons, psychedelics, or pubescent virgins. Tangier became a home-near-home for the adventurer, the social outcast, the pervert, the mystic, the misfit, and the thrill-seeker. Whereas in North Africa the tourists sought out Cairo and Luxor, the businessmen Benghazi and Casablanca, the revolutionaries Algiers and Accra, the thrill-seekers headed for Tangier.

And there we were, though we weren’t seeking thrills at the moment. Garages and welding shops were more our concern, for we had much to do before we could face Africa. We put the special tires on the Land Cruiser, replaced our SA 30 motor oil with SAE 40 to reduce wear and heat in the deserts, greased both cars and repacked their front-wheel bearings. The storage trailer had to be assembled, our cargo shifted, film protected from the heat in Thermos chests, stoves cleaned, our Spanish money changed, food laid in. Three days. On the last of them we had to take the camper in to be welded and braced because the rough slide down the mountain had cracked the Spanish welds and put four new breaks in the undercarriage. The welders, working underneath with their torches, accidentally burned through the thin wood floor of the camper, setting afire the compartments where our clothes were stored and almost destroying the whole thing before we doused it.

  • Photo caption on page 69 of the printed publication:
    Steve, AL and Mira, one of the three New Zealand nurses who accompanied us into western North Africa, eating at a roadside stall in Morocco. When AL wore a fez, he could easily pass for an Arab.

Previous – Chapter 5C – Next

Chapter 5B

Music: On the Road Again by Willy Neslon and Country Roads by John Denver

Previous – Chapter 5B – Next

More Tricks at the Border Car Queue

•••••

Al and Willy walked back to their adopted car-by now second-to chat awhile and re-establish their credentials and their unselfish motives. Then they started out again, with Willy after another German and Al onto another American. Soon I heard Al say, “I wonder if it’s really worth visiting really-I mean what with the epidemic and all.”

“Epidemic? What epidemic?” the man asked.

“Oh haven’t you heard? Nothing too serious, I guess-just some schistosomiasis. But they say it’s all right as long as you have a schistosomiasis vaccination.”

“I have cholera and smallpox, that’s all the travel agent said I’d need.”

“Probably didn’t know about this-came up pretty quick 43 cases in the past three days.”

“I’ve waited this long I’m not going back. I don’t think I’ll catch anything in one day.”

“Probably not, but you know the Gibraltarians aren’t letting people in unless they have schistosomiasis shots.”

“You sure?”

“Why should I lie?”

Their last intended victim, an American lawyer, was a toughie. He understood Spanish, insisted he had all his vaccinations, and his wife vetoed the bikini contest. When I heard him mention that it was the next to last day of his vacation I decided to have a go at him.

“I suppose you’ve heard about the bloody queue on the other side?” I asked, affecting my most British manner and my best colonial accent.

“No, what do you mean?”

“Well, it’s even worse getting out of Gibraltar, you know. These Spainies only let one car an hour out. Why, the last time I went in it took me five days to get out.”

“I find that hard to believe. I never heard about any trouble getting out. If it’s so bad how come you’re going back?” the lawyer asked.

“I wish I weren’t, but I have to. Own a shop there. Going back to try to sell it, I am. The bloody blockade has ruined the business. Nobody wants to go in when they know they may be trapped for days.”

“You sure?”

“Sure as I live there,” I answered, moving up to the head of the line.

Once in Gibraltar we headed for the shops on Main Street. They’re run by the wiliest collection of merchants west of Baghdad-British, Maltese, Gibraltarians, Sephardics, Greeks, Indians, Chinese-men who pace their store fronts shouting in a cacophony of accents that they have lower prices and better merchandise than the crook next door. Fortunately, we had the pick of the place, because the Spanish embargo had slashed the 850,000 tourists who visited Gibraltar in 1964 to 200,000 in 1965.

We split up to do our shopping. Willy went to buy our 500 rolls of film and some extra filters. I went to look for a small storage trailer to pull behind the Jeep, because the load on our cars and camper was still much too heavy. Woodrow, whom we had appointed treasurer, sought out a bank to buy Moroccan money, sold in Gibraltar for almost half what it costs in Africa. And Al, our self-appointed medic, wandered off in search of “a few things for the first aid kit.”

We rendezvoused two hours later, Willy with the film, I with the trailer, Woodrow with the Moroccan dirhams, and Al up to his ears with bags and boxes.

“What the hell do you have there?” I asked.

“Just a few things we need to round out the first aid kit. I mentioned it before,” he answered, hoping to let it go at that.

I pointed out that it looked more like a year’s supplies for a traveling hospital and that we already had space problems. “Right, Steve, that’s why I only got the essentials.” “Like what?” asked Woodrow.

“Like these pills for your diarrhea. See, 500 tablets.”

“I guess we do need something like that-“

“I don’t want any of these,” Willy cut in. “Everybody should buy their own. He’ll use up more than all of us. I never need them.”

”And what about these salt tablets?” I asked AL

“You know, they prevent heatstroke in the desert. Help retain moisture, metabolize protein. Good stuff to have,” Al explained.

“Yes, but 3,000 of them?”

“They were on sale.”

“Was this terramycin also on sale? You aren’t supposed to use that without a prescription,” I pointed out.

“You’re right, Steve, but you never know when we might need a powerful antibiotic, like if we’re hundreds of miles from another doctor.”

Another doctor?”

“Well, you know what I mean, Steve.”

I’m afraid I do. And what the hell is this stuff-this Darvon 65?”

“Well, I thought we should be prepared for any emergency, so I bought that. It’s an anesthetic.”

“What in the world do we need an anesthetic for?”

“We probably don’t, but just in case. Somebody might break an arm, for instance, or you might get appendicitis, and I’d have to operate. With this stuff you won’t feel a thing.”

I was sure of that. ”Al, be serious, how can you operate on anybody? You don’t know the first thing about-“

“I bought this book, too. It’s called Understanding Surgery, and I’m sure I-“

As we were driving along Main Street toward the ferry, a cute girl waved at Al and shouted a spirited “Cheerio.”

“Who was that?” I asked him.

“Who was who?”

“You know who I mean, the girl in front of that drugstore.”

“Oh, her? Well, uh-that’s Muriel. She works there … you see, it was like this …. “

After dropping Woodrow, Willy, and the stuff at the ferry, and promising to meet them in Tangier the next afternoon, we headed back to Spain. But the road out of Gibraltar was blocked. The policeman manning the barricade could have passed for a London bobby, except for his suntan, as he walked up to us and asked, “Heading back to Spain, chaps? Afraid you won’t be able to make it tonight.”

“Why not?” I asked. “It’s only five-thirty and we’ve still got half an hour until the border closes.”

“Sorry, lads, last car’s gone through. The Spanish only let one an hour out, you know,” the policeman said.

“You must be kidding. I told that to somebody this morning for a joke.”

“It’s no joke. They wouldn’t be lettin’ you through ’til tomorrow, now, and there’re four cars queued up ahead of you already.”

Al turned to me: “That means we can’t get out until twelve .”

“That’s no good,” I explained to the policeman. “We have to catch the ferry for Cueta at noon. Isn’t there any way to get out earlier?”

“Well, now, lads, you can walk across the border and catch the bus to Algeciras, but no more cars ’til tomorrow.”

I noticed that Al had his right elbow cradled in the palm of his left hand, his right hand on his chin, the way he does when he’s cooking up some scheme.

“What’s the fastest you could drive to Algeciras?” he asked me.

“About twenty minutes.” “Make it fifteen.”

“What’s the difference? The ferry sails at noon.”

“Don’t worry. Just be there,” he said, grabbing the girls and starting to walk toward Spain.

“What about packing our equipment and getting the Jeep and collecting the bond?” I shouted after him. “Don’t worry. Just be at the pier at twelve-fifteen.”

Previous – Chapter 5B – Next

Chapter 5A

Music: On the Road Again by Willy Neslon and Country Roads by John Denver

Previous – Chapter 5A – Next

The Rock on the Road

•••••

The rock of Gibraltar. To the geologist, a faulted, 1,400-foot mountain of porous Lower Jurassic Age limestone rising abruptly from the westernmost extremity of the Mediterranean Basin. To the geographer, two and one-quarter miles of inhospitable rock near the southernmost tip of the Iberian Peninsula. To the poet, a metaphor for might, a simile for strength. To the inhabitants of the ancient world, one of the twin Pillars of Hercules that marked the boundary beyond which no man dared to sail for fear he’d fall off the edge of the sea. To the historian, the site and scene of sixteen of mankind’s longest sieges and bloodiest battles. To the military strategist, a once indispensable bastion, the impregnable, invincible Lion of the Rock, crouched in dominance astride the shipping lifeline to Suez, strategically still important, even in an era of jumbo jets and superbombs.

To me, a place I’d always wanted to visit, a soaring stone peak forever imprinted in my childhood dreams. To our expedition, the shipping point to Africa, and, even more important, the only free port in Europe and the place we had to go to buy the $2,000 worth of film and equipment we still needed, a purchase that would have cost us twice as much anywhere else in Europe.

But to the British and Spanish, a still formidable symbol: to the former, a treasured vestige of a glorious empire on which the sun still never sets; to the latter, an irritating reminder of destiny’s desertion, of a dead Empire on which the sun no longer shines; to the two, a bone of contention for almost 300 years.

As we drove along the coastal road from Cadiz, Manu gave us the whole story. After the war of the Spanish Succession in 1704, Spain had been forced to cede Gibraltar to Great Britain. The deed rankled. Gibraltar was no unseen and quickly forgotten overseas island, but a part of the Spanish mainland itself, and Spain wanted her back. Three times she tried to blast out the British garrison, and three times she was thrown back. By 1830 Britain had made Gibraltar a Crown Colony, the status it holds today. With the opening of the Suez Canal, in 1869, Gibraltar’s importance expanded a thousandfold, placing Britain astride both outlets of the Mediterranean. The Rock became a symbol of British power and Spanish impotence.

The situation was relatively quiet until the spring of 1954 when Queen Elizabeth II paid an official state visit to Gibraltar, re-emphasizing British sovereignty over it and touching off in Spain vigorous demands that the Rock be returned-or else. Six months before we arrived the “or else” became an economic embargo.

Gibraltar is a rock in more ways than one: it grows nothing, produces little. Its livelihood depends on tourists and their purchase of cameras, liquor, film, perfume, cigarettes, binoculars and a thousand other items which are cheaper in Gibraltar’s duty-free shops than anywhere else in Europe. It was this tourist trade Spain decided to choke, and to do so she put prohibitive taxes on items being brought by tourists into Spain from Gibraltar. She later decided to slash the flow of traffic into Gibraltar, something she was ideally situated to do since the only road onto the Rock passes through the Spanish border post at La Linea de la Conception. In order not to insult Britain overtly, she operated under the guise of requiring time to search vehicles for smuggled goods, wasting a full hour on each car so that only ten a day got in, instead of hundreds as before.

As we brooded over this, we rounded a turn on the coastal road, and suddenly-there was Africa, looming up out of the mists in the distance, far across the sparkling Straits of Gibraltar. We stopped the cars and stared across the continents. Africa. The cloud-capped mountains of Morocco beyond the distant water’s edge rose alluring and beckoning. Africa. Home of the Sahara and the Sudan, land of the Niger and the Nile, Cairo and Khartoum, Kilimanjaro and the Mountains of the Moon. AFRICA. Still the living land of adventure.

We reached La Linea slightly after noon to find ten cars ahead of us in line, which meant that if this policy of one car an hour were true we’d never get through that day. And we didn’t. When six o’clock came the border closed with four cars still ahead of us. Neither flattery nor intimidation ameliorated the situation. Even the bribe, a time-honored custom in Spain, bore no results in this case, as two unhappy men in the Renault ahead of us learned. There was no nonsense, no leniency, and no more than one car an hour on the road to Gibraltar.

We pitched our camper at the border. Two cars had pulled out of line, so with luck we’d be through by ten the next morning. Despite the delay, we were all, save Woodrow, in good spirits, for we had wine, food, friendly companions, and an interesting story to tell our friends about the time we had to wait overnight to get into Gibraltar. Poor Woodrow was in the middle of a diarrhea siege, his third or fourth on the trip, and he was forced to spend most of the night visiting various shrub-hidden sites off the road near the heavily patrolled border. Near midnight he had an armed escort back to our camper. His last latrine, it seemed, had been somebody’s foxhole.

The border opened at eight, and by ten we led the line, all anxious to push through. But the Spaniards were pushing also-backwards. If we wanted to go to Gibraltar, they told us, we’d have to go in an empty auto because the embargo rules wouldn’t abide our heavily loaded cars and camper. They also told us that we couldn’t get our bond refunded if we left Spain by way of Gibraltar. We’d have to ship our equipment directly from Spain to Africa if we wanted our $1,750 back. Manu, they also pointed out, was a Spaniard-something he hardly let us forget- and as a Spaniard he was forbidden to go to Gibraltar for any reason- something he’d neglected to mention.

We left the border and drove to the bustling ferry and fishing port of Algeciras and camped to ponder our problems. We had to get to Gibraltar to buy our film and other important equipment. We had to find some way of getting that material to Africa. And we had to find some way of getting back our customs bond and getting to Africa ourselves.

There was only one way, complicated and extremely inconvenient: we would leave the Jeep, the camper, and all our equipment in Algeciras with Manu so that the rest of us would be free to drive to Gibraltar to make our purchases; and while Willy and Woodrow took them by ferry from Gibraltar to Tangier, Al and I and the girls would return to Algeciras to meet Manu, pick up our equipment, claim our customs bond, and sail to Ceuta, the Spanish port in Morocco, and from there drive the difficult mountain road to Tangier to pick up Willy and Woodrow and the rest of the equipment. It was about as convenient as going from Brooklyn to the Bronx by way of Cucamonga but there was no other way.

Early the next morning, with Manu soundly guarding the camp in his sleep, the seven of us set out for the Rock, reaching La Linea at eight only to find thirteen cars already in line. That meant we couldn’t get in until the morning after, but our ferry sailed that next day at noon.

We went to work on the line. The thirteenth, twelfth, and eleventh cars were easy enough to get rid of by simply explaining the arithmetical facts of life.

I told the occupants of the tenth car, five American sailors from the naval base at Rota, that there was absolutely nothing for them to do in Gibraltar, that the women were all married, the goods overpriced, the beaches overcrowded, the casino crooked, and the sightseeing attractions closed until summer; and that they’d be much better heading for the action up around Torremolinos. Hadn’t they heard about the bikini contest there?

Now we were sure of getting in, but why stop there? Willy and Al slipped out of the Land Cruiser and walked around the long way to the front of the line where they befriended the driver of the third car and made themselves so much at home that, after half an hour, everyone else in line assumed it was their car. Then they could operate; surely no one would suspect deviousness from someone at the head of the line.

Walking back to the ninth car in line, a German family of six crammed in a VW, Willy introduced himself as a fellow Deutschlander. After a while he said, “By the way, why do you wait in line? You won’t be able to get in today.”

“No, you are wrong,” the German answered. “I have it carefully computed. I will be the last car in, just when they close the frontier at six o’clock.”

“Oh, haven’t you heard?” asked Willy, looking genuinely upset. “They’ve changed the system in the past few days. Now they close the border at five o’clock.”

“But when I was in Algeciras this morning I was told six.” Willy thought for a moment, then asked, “Do you speak Spanish? -No-only the numbers-well, let’s go ask the guard.”

So Willy, with the distraught German following, went over to the guard, whom he asked in his speediest Spanish what time it would be one hour before the border closed.

The guard looked puzzled. Willy repeated his question.

The guard thought for a minute and answered, ”A las cinco.” An angry beetle buzzed out of line.

“I say there,” I yelled at Willy, pretending not to know him, and making sure that the car ahead of us could hear, “why did that Volkswagen leave?”

Willy, going along with the ruse, and making sure his reply wasn’t lost on the car ahead of me, answered, “The guard told him they close the border at four o’clock today because of a holiday.”

“What did you say?” our victim responded.

“I said the guard said they close the border at four today. That’s why the Volkswagen left. You’ll just miss getting in.”

A couple of curses, a turn of a key, and we were up another hour.

Previous – Chapter 5A – Next

Chapter 4D

Music: On the Road Again by Willy Neslon and Country Roads by John Denver

Previous – Chapter 4D – Next

Few Consolations, Moving on

•••••

A miracle dispelled the gloom, a warm and friendly miracle. As we prepared to bed down for the night, a pretty blonde head poked through the front camper Hap, followed by a body that was suntanned and solid, dressed in short shorts, and curved in all the right places. “Say there, chaps,” she said in a fetching British accent, “thought you might be Yanks. We heard you clear across the camp. Just got here, we did. Hitched all the way from Seville. Wonder if it would inconvenience you chaps if we laid out our sleeping bags near you. It’s rather dark and spooky out there and my friends would feel safer with some Yanks around.” The friends were two: one tall, genteel, poised, the fashion-model type; the other, short, freckled, red-haired, cute, vivacious. Something for everybody! Welcome travelers! Good-bye gripes! Ole!

The girls looked as good by dawn’s early light as they had by lantern. The coffee they woke us with was as heavenly as the breakfast in bed that followed it-our first of the trip. After introductions, we learned that Elizabeth, Barbara and Mira were all nurses, born in New Zealand, trained in London, hitching through Spain and France before going to work. Little did they or we know then that they’d come half way across Africa with us and almost end up in some Arab’s harem.

The girls took over our shopping, cooking, cleaning, and pot-washing. Never was a trans-world expedition so pampered. Our camping in Europe was supposed to condition us for the rigors of Africa; but it was more like being prepared for a sojourn in a seraglio. It was surely, as are all honeymoons, doomed to end, but for the moment, we made the most of it.

The nurses had caused us to forget our beautiful customs clearance girl in Madrid until her cable arrived. The Spanish customs officials, she said, had agreed to release our equipment, duty-free, if we posted a $1,000 bond which would be returned to us, they promised, when we left Spain, provided we took all the equipment out with us. Al left for Madrid to seal the deal while the rest of us decided to put the delay to good use and take advantage of our location and company. If you have to be stuck somewhere with somebody at sometime, you couldn’t ask for more than springtime in Jerez with three adventurous Kiwi nurses.

Jerez, more formally, Jerez de la Frontera, is a most remarkable town: in no place on earth is drinking so important. In Jerez it is refined; in Jerez it is an art; in Jerez it is everything. If Bacchus were looking for a ball, if Dionysus wanted a drink, they’d head for Jerez; its cup runneth over.

Four days after he’d left for Madrid we received a telegram from Al: he’d gotten our equipment out of customs and would be arriving in Jerez that night with it and Manu. Since the Jeep repairs were also finished, it looked as if we’d be ready to leave Spain at last. I spent the morning convincing the girls to come with us to Africa, as far as Tunis where they could catch a ferry to France, and the afternoon at Blackie’s, discussing the trip with his friends and saying good-bye. As we were leaving. Blackie gave me something he said we might need-a .38 pistol.

On the way back from Blackie’s the Jeep began to knock and stall so badly that we just made it to the shop at Puerto. There a German mechanic, whom we called in for consultation, found that three of the rods were worn. They should have been replaced, he said, when the engine was dismantled during the original repair, but the workers were probably too lazy. Parts would again have to be ordered from Seville, the engine taken apart once more, and our expedition set back another week.

I broke the bad news to Al when he pulled in from Madrid that night with Manu and our equipment, but he didn’t seem to mind the delay-nor did Leila, the customs clearance agent, whom he’d brought back with him, and who looked devastating in tight stretch pants and high leather boots as she explained shyly, “I had a few days’ vacation coming, and I’ve always wanted to go camping.” From the way she clung to Al, I suspected she’d just as readily have spent them climbing the Matterhorn or exploring the Arctic Circle if he had happened to be heading in those directions.

Even after Al had explained that Leila had offered to help us with our customs problems in Cadiz, Barbara and Mira were still so jealous they didn’t speak to him, except to let him know he could expect no special favors from them when Leila had gone. “But what the hell,” as Al said, “isn’t a bird in the hand worth two in the (African) bush?”

Our problems in Cadiz were not easily settled, even with Leila’s assistance in pleading, translating, cajoling, explaining, promising, and threatening. Aside from the complications involved in arranging to post bond for our equipment, we were anchored by a shipping agent who discovered a slight mistake on the invoice attached to our oil. It was a simple oversight that consigned that shipment to The Trans World Record Expedition rather than to a particular one of us, but one that his worship of petty regulations wouldn’t allow him to ignore and whose rectifications required a cable from us to Macmillan Oil in New York, a cable from Macmillan back to us in Cadiz, followed by letters from us to the shipping company, the shipping company to the customs clearance agent, the customs clearance agent to the shipping company, the shipping company to us, us to the customs clearance agent, the customs clearance agent to us, us to the assistant chief of customs, the assistant chief of customs to the chief of customs, and the chief of customs back to us, the last granting us permission to claim our equipment-as soon as the initial bonding arrangement had been effectuated. A sharp clerk in the States would have taken it on himself to settle the whole mess in a minute, but in Spain there is no premium on initiative, no reward for innovation, no bonus for speed, for what’s the use of hurrying when tomorrow is sure to be the same as yesterday.

It was the same everywhere in Spain: slow and sloppy. For instance when we went back to the shop to pick up the Jeep, we got no farther than Blackie’s house (where we’d gone to say good-by again) when the engine conked out. Blackie towed u back to Puerto where we complained and raged; but they still wouldn’t look at it until mañana.

When we had first arrived in Jerez, in mid-April, people had asked if we were planning to stay for the famous spring fair which would begin May 7th.

“No,” I’d always answered, ‘Tm afraid we’ll have to miss it. We’d love to see it, but we only plan to be around Jerez a few days. By the 7th of May we’ll be crossing Egypt.”

Well, May 7th came, and the only thing we’d been crossing was the stretch of asphalt between the auto shop at Puerto and the customs shed at Cadiz. Two thousand miles we’d put on the Land Cruiser-and moved not an inch on the map. But that morning we were ready at last. The equipment was out of customs, the Jeep was out of the shop, and we were ready to roll. We closed down the camper and loaded up the cars, taking hours to find space for the recently added passengers and equipment. The canvas sides of the Jeep were strained to bursting, the top of the camper was covered with new tires, and six sloshing four-gallon jugs of Jerez wine hung from the Land Cruiser’s back bumper. An English tourist waited for an hour with movie camera in hand to record our departure. The camp manager wept to see us leave. The German mechanic wished us luck. Blackie and his family waved goodbye for the third time.

  • Photo caption on page 52 of the printed publication:
    Many of the stone bridges we crossed in Spain dated back to the Crusades, and most of them hadn’t seen repairs since then.

Fourteen miles out of Camp Pinar, on the road to Gibraltar, the Jeep broke down again.

There were some surprised people at the spring fair in Jerez that night.

By the third day of the fair our Jeep was in far better shape then we, though we somehow managed to pack everything again and get moving toward Gibraltar, the fourth country on our itinerary and our last in Europe.

As we drove, the shortwave set, which had been released from Spanish customs, brought us up to date on the world we had left a month before and heard little from since.

A fanatic terrorist group, El Farah, organized by Syria, had attacked Israel through Jordanian territory, and Israel had vowed reprisals, inflaming the Middle East.

In the Rann of Kutch, a miserable salt marsh on the sub-continent, India and Pakistan were shooting over a disputed boundary line, throwing tanks and planes into the worst flareup since partition.

Prince Sihanouk of Cambodia had broken relations with the United States, claiming we had armed his enemies in Thailand and had helped the South Vietnamese raid his territory.

In Vietnam itself, American Marines had moved out from Danang to fight their first ground battle of the war against the Vietcong.

The world was heating up all over our route, but in wondering how these wars and feuds would affect our trip, we looked too far ahead. One of our worst problems was coming up just around the bend: the Spanish blockade of Gibraltar.

  • Photo caption on page 54 of the printed publication:
    In Jerez de la Frontera, Spain, the five members of the Trans World Record Expedition were finally together, studying the route on our map. Our home for the next 16 months was the trailer-camper seen here in its erect position with the door open. From left: Woodrow, Manu, Steve, Willy, Al. Not all would make it to the end.

Previous – Chapter 4D – Next

Chapter 4C

Music: On the Road Again by Willy Neslon and Country Roads by John Denver

Previous – Chapter 4C – Next

More Delays

•••••

But not everything has survived the generations unchanged; for it seemed to us that Catholicism, the official state religion, powerful as it still is in Spain, was losing its hold on the younger people, especially the college students. Spain’s Catholicism has been, with Italy’s, the most conservative in the Old World, stiff and unchanging for centuries, even opposed to the much-needed reforms of Vatican II, and we saw signs everywhere that the young people were determined to live in the 20th century even if their clerics weren’t. Even Holy Week is not so holy any more, having become as much a festival as a reverent or penitential occasion. The people underneath the pointed hoods are often not the ones who should be doing penance; they have paid gypsies to take their places so they can slip out of their duties undetected, to go carousing and drinking in the cafes. Young girls, who all year long are under watchful eyes in the closely chaperoned society, are at liberty for Semana Santa, and they meet boys, stay out late, and get into trouble. There’s a saying among the young Spaniards that Semana Santa is when the virgins lose their virginity, but this didn’t quite correlate with the findings of our own independent research.

As part of our adjustment to life on the road, we began to fall into distinct personal habits. Woodrow’s habit was sleep. We were getting seven hours a night at this stage of the trip, but it wasn’t enough for Woodrow, who’d grumble when we’d wake him, take forever to get dressed, and fall asleep in the car soon after breakfast. Willy’s fault was taking pictures to excess, shooting every bird or bush or cloud that caught his fancy, wasting time and film, taking pictures even as he was talking or eating or driving. My fault was daydreaming. The slightest thing would set me off and I’d be centuries away-marching beside El Cid as he drove out the Moors; kneeling with Columbus as he petitioned Queen Isabella for ships with which to sail to India; trudging the dusty roads behind Don Quixote’s faithful steed, Rosinante-only to snap back to the present and find out I’d nearly run over somebody’s ass.

But Al’s habit was the worst: he couldn’t sit still. When he wasn’t driving, he’d fidget and fuss, check the cameras, wipe the lenses, count the filters, reorganize our glove box, and exhaust the guidebooks. His favorite diversion was poring over the maps and mileage charts and our daily log, during which he’d infallibly rouse Woodrow from his slumber and me from my reverie to involve us in his endless calculations. “How many miles were we when we left Seville this morning?” he’d begin, nudging me to check the speedometer. “Now let’s see,” he’d go on, “if gas here is nine and a half pesetas a litre and if there are sixty pesetas in a dollar-what was the last rate of exchange we got? Fifty-nine?-and 3.875 litres in a gallon, and we’re getting 14.7 miles to a gallon, that means …. “

We set up our tents and limping trailer at Camp Pinar, south of Jerez. Thick rows of man-high flowering cactus ran the boundary, a cool breeze swept in from the Gulf of Cadiz, and a grove of tall pines gave the camp shade and its name. The location was ideal: we were close to Cadiz where our sponsors had shipped the rest of our heavy equipment by boat from New York, close to the welding shops at Puerto where we could work on our shattered camper, close to Jerez de la Frontera, the wine capital of Spain, where my old Jeep was stored and where we could eat, drink, and make merry before moving on to the deprivations of Africa. And close to Arcos de Frontera where we went for the running of the bulls.

Easter Sunday dawned in glory, sunny but cool, as we headed north toward Arcos for the once-a-year-day when the Spanish aficionado can demonstrate his own manliness and courage. Great puffs of cloud rolled over the land of Don Quixote in a blue, blue sky, each cloud its separate shape, but all of them heading for the hill of Arcos. Nor did they lack for company, for the road was filled with cars, bikes, scooters, carts, and pedestrians.

Arcos grabs your breath at first sight. It clings to a cliff high above a sleepy river that winds through an otherwise flat and repetitious countryside. A medieval castle and a spiring church look down upon the whitewashed houses that clutch the thousand-foot cliff. Hundreds of birds, who nest in the cliff face, form a living halo about the town.

The first bull was scheduled to be turned loose at 11: 00, but it was nearly noon before we heard the shouting down below. We had found ourselves a perch out of harm’s way, atop a wall bordering the main street, and I was still undecided whether to join or just watch until a quick review of the other wallflowers made my decision for me: they were all women, children, and very old men, and even the last seemed to long to run again before the bull. That did it! I’d be damned if I’d sit and watch with the women and children. I didn’t know the twists and turns of Arcos, and I didn’t even know the Spanish word for HELP, but I was going to join the running of the bulls.

The noise from below grew louder and closer until a surging mob of shouting, sweating, happy, hysterical, frightened men charged past, with a black bull snorting in hot pursuit. From the broad main street they turned down a side street too narrow to hold them all. Jammed against the walls, squeezed against the houses, pushed and elbowed against each other, some were bound to get caught. It was a young boy, about twenty, in the back of the pack, scrambling madly to get through the human impasse, who got it. I could hear him scream in agony as the bull dug a horn in his thigh, then flung him high overhead like a broken old doll. He crashed to the cobblestones and lay crumpled there, blood spreading around him, while the bull mercifully forgot him and took off after the running crowd, with the sweet smell of flesh in his nostrils, and a fresh crimson banner on his horns.

I leaped from the wall, ran past the bleeding boy, and took off in pursuit of the bull. I wasn’t sure what I was doing, but I was doing it. I thought I’d come just to watch these crazy people, but I found myself running along with the craziest of them, swept along with the infectious spirit of the mob, ducking down side streets, climbing over walls, racing through alleys.

  • Photo caption on page 46 of the printed publication:
    Caught in the festive spirit of Arcos,  Steve cheated a bit and was running  behind the bull-until the bull turned around and almost ended our expedition on the spot.

As I mused on this, the bull turned, and the crowd with him. I was caught unaware. A frenzied fat man crashed into me and I tripped over a boy’s foot, taking three Spaniards down with me.

When I looked up, it was into the face of the biggest, maddest, meanest, horniest bull I’d ever seen in my life. The four of us were so inextricably jumbled together on the ground that the bull had time to pick his victim; I just hoped he had no preference for Americanos. I was wrong: his decision made, he lowered his head toward mine. His horns caught the gleam of the high noon sun and I felt his hot, stinking breath inches from my face. What kind of way was this to go, this ignoble finish, my guts gored out by a bull while playing a stupid game with a bunch of half-stewed village idiots?

As a final act of defiance, I spit at the bull, a rather feeble salvo of saliva, my throat was so dry, but as satisfactory a final comment as I could think of at the moment. And the bull turned away. Ole! It was neither the spit nor a magic charm so much as a drunken teenager who had seized the chance to show his bravery by yanking el toro’s tail. The bull snorted off after the upstart, and my companions of the cobblestones and I stumbled to our feet, the cheers of the crowd ringing in our ears. Ole! Ole! A shopkeeper ran out with a bottle of good aguardiente that I held to my lips and gulped until my throat burned and tears came to my eyes. Ole!

The taste of the bull and near disaster was still strong in my mouth as we left Arcos for Jerez to check on my Jeep which, after my Russian trip, I’d left with Blackie McManus, a big ex-Marine fighter pilot, expatriate and old friend. He and his wife and five children live on the outskirts of Jerez in an old Spanish house. The walls are cracked, the plaster is peeling, the roof leaks. Everything smells of a glorious past and an uncertain future.

Blackie had promised to treat my equipment as if it were his own. He meant it literally, and judging by the condition of his house and grounds, I had cause for concern. When I didn’t see the Jeep I hesitantly asked Blackie where it was. “It’s in the shop at Puerto. I took it there after I got your telegram last Wednesday. Nothing much wrong. I heard a slight knock in the engine and turned it in.” A slight knock, I thought, and went to use the bathroom where none of the plumbing worked.

The next morning Al and Woodrow went to Cadiz to claim our shipment, Willy and I to Puerto to weld the camper and pick up the Jeep. When we met back at camp that evening, Al reported that our equipment, including our vital tires and engine oil, were all safe in the Cadiz customs shed and we could get them whenever we wanted-after we paid $750 customs duty. It was Madrid all over again. My day was no less discouraging. I’d had the camper welded, but the breaks were severe, the cost high, and there was no guarantee the welds would hold. The Jeep looked terrible when I found it behind the big workshop in Puerto, covered with dust and dirt, the spare wheel missing, the tires worn, the engine in pieces on the Boor. During the four days of Semana Santa, no work had been done at the shop, whose normal work day resembled a six-hour siesta sandwiched between two hours of desultory labor at a pace which, with the Jeep’s crankshaft scored, pistons pitted, a rod broken, and spare parts needed from Seville, meant it might be weeks before the job was terminado. The date was April 19th, and the deserts of North Africa were getting hotter every day.

We were a dispirited group at the camp that night, faces long, tempers short. A few of us were even beginning to believe that our globe-girdling expedition was going to end then and there, at Camp Pinar, Spain, with all the world still to see.

Previous – Chapter 4C – Next