letters to the editor

We’re stuck again, buried up to the axles in fine Sahara sand in
the middle of a minefield. Our convoy of vehicles, 23 in all, has
been abandoned by our Moroccan military escorts at the
no-man’s land separating Western Sahara and Mauritania. No
wonder. A 50-kilometer-wide minefield spreads before us, and
the shifting sands obscure the tracks of any other vehicles.
Blowing winds have uncovered some mines, but who knows
what others lie buried just beneath the surface?
Our fear is compounded by the fact that we keep getting
stuck. On its own, our SWB Series II can traverse the soft dunes
with little problem, but we are towing a heavy trailer. Each time
we bog down, we have to pull out the sand mats, unhitch the
trailer, dig ourselves out, then turn the Land Rover around and
haul the trailer clear with our winch. We have a sneaking
suspicion that we will die out here, either blown to bits by a
mine or because we simply cannot force our way through the
deep sand. I look over at my then- boyfriend, Andrew, as he
unspools the winch cable for the 15th time. “Whose bright idea
was it to drive a vehicle the length of Africa?” I ask, knowing full
well that it was mine.
It all started about 14 months earlier in San Francisco,
where we were living. After a particularly bad day at work, we
treated ourselves to dinner at an Italian restaurant, drank a lot
of wine, and convinced ourselves that we should quit our jobs
to travel overland through Africa. It made sense at the time.
Wine does that to you.
Of course, we didn’t get from the wine to the desert easily.
In the days that followed, there was a lot of discussion about
how we’d travel. Andrew wanted to backpack. I wanted
motorcycles. But when we rented the movie Born Free, I
instantly knew that we had to drive through Africa, for no other
reason than that I had fallen head-over-heels for the Land Rover
that Elsa slept on. Who cares that the movie was 30 years old? I
needed that car. Andrew thought I was nuts.
Thus began my search. Within three weeks I found our
Land Rover. The ad read: 1960 Series II Land Rover, mint
condition, 32,000 miles. I called. A man named Scotty (yes, he
was Scottish) answered. I drilled him: Is the car really in mint
condition? Does it have any rust? How big is it? Could I drive it
across Africa? Laughter filled the phone. My face glowed red.
This guy thinks I’m a fool, I thought, but instead he started
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