This beautiful dune was too much to resist! I wanted to have a few trips of racing down and struggling up ….just for the fun of it. One of the Berber camel herders travelling with us, Said, thought that we could only be joking. He clearly had never done anything like this ….. playing around in the sand for no other reason than pure pleasure. Since we were at the top already, it was all too easy to begin! I was last to take the plunge so that I could take pictures but really, I ended up laughing so hard at Said that it is surprising that I managed at all. He was doing fantastically well until about half way down where the sand, as I soon discovered for myself, got very deep, and that was that.
Said became an explosion of sand and a great tumbling mass that kept on spinning. He finally stopped at the bottom in a heap. Once he caught his breath and got over his shock, he became as keen as we were and went up and down time and again…a true convert to plain old- fashioned fun! The way up was a different story where he had all the laughs; like a camel, he was sure footed and inexhaustible where I stumbled and drowned in the shifting sand. That particular afternoon was very magical especially as it ended with a visitation from a hare and then, as we made our way down towards our camp, a red fox. I have no doubt that from time to time Said will roll down a dune or two, remembering in his heart that afternoon when he learned to embrace the dunes with a laughter and a lightness that he had not before known.
