Last Thursday I received a message from my friends. They said they were going to camp for the weekend and asked me if I wanted to join.
The next morning I went to Tunis for a German language lesson, then checked the guys up to see if we could go together. It turned out that some of them are going that evening and some the next day. The ones going that evening had no spare place in the car, so I had to rely on public transport.
It was a hot afternoon when I left Tunis towards the Google Maps location they sent to me. Rumors say it was over 40°C. I reached the beach by 6 PM after an interesting journey and I sent them a photo of the beach.
As soon as I left the microbus that got me there, I started feeling a friendly atmosphere. See, usually, when I travel alone, I tend to seem like a local and avoid attracting any attention. Cause, in my mind, with attention, can come a great deal of danger. Though I have no proof of that theory. But this time, my huge backpack and my camping material were screaming "he's not from here".
Still, everyone in the area was greeting and smiling and made me have this strange feeling of "no harm will get me in this place".
And so I started the 3Km walk to the beach. I walked half of it and a guy on a van picked me up and gave me a lift for the rest of the distance.
The location they send me in a beach with sunshades installed and a coffee shop... a whole complex for families to hang out and swim. Not particularly a camping site. But there are some fishers who were camping in the area. I checked out my friends. They said they were having a flat tire and they will get there later than expected.
By the time they got there, it was already dark and I have already swam, explored the area, ate my dinner, hanged out with the fishers a little, had a headache, took a pill, and started feeling sleepy haha.
Besides, there was a misunderstanding. whoever sent the location sent me the famous beach in Barkoukech instead of the spot a few Km from it where they decided to camp. So when my friends shared their location with me, my google maps said I need to walk 6 Km to get there.
I called them and told them I'll just finish the night where I am and join them the next morning to spend the next two days with them.
The sunset was beautiful. The night sky disappointed me at first, as a selenophile, because it had no moon. But then the bright stars made up for that. I hanged out a little with the fishers then I went to sleep.
When I decided to go camping I didn't expect to be hiking a lot. So I didn't bring any good shoes. But when I woke up that Saturday, I decided to further explore the area I'm about to leave, wearing my flip-flops haha.
The forest behind me looked like this. I kept going deeper and deeper but then I remembered I was camping alone and left my tent out there unguarded. I mean, the area was safe, and "no harm got me in this place" but let's not push my luck.
I gathered my stuff and prepared myself for the 6 Km journey.
That's where three guys with motorcycles offered me a ride. I recognized them from the night before. They were camping not far from me. I rode with them to a coffee shop where I decided to have a cold drink, recharge my phone, and stare at this view.
I found out that the three guys came on their bikes from Sidi Bouzid, a place hundreds of Km away from that place. And they were going back home after a few nights of camping. I found it interesting how much trouble they had just to come to the place I went to by mistake.
I walked the rest of the way on my own, following google maps' instructions until it left me not far from my friends' location, but across the river!
My friends were right across those fields, somewhere in the forest. But to get there I had to, somehow, come down the cliff that comes down from the old abandoned train rails.
I had to improvise from there. I went closer to the beach and climbed a hill to have better visibility of the area and, to my delight, I saw this. Suddenly the whole journey made sense and I wasn't complaning about the 40+°C or the long walk with no proper shoes ar the heavy backpack... I was enjoying the moment, grateful for all the mistakes and missunderstandings and the coincidences that led me there.
I crossed the mountain and the small forest on it and went to the beach to get to cross the river where it meets the sea. Crossing the forest, at first I followed some human traces. That gave me some comfort. But then, suddenly, the human traces disappeared and were replaced by some animal traces, big ones.
Only two possible explanations came to my mind at that time, both scarier than each other. When the forest started looking like this, I held a small rock in my hand for comfort and kept going. Soon after that, I had all this beach to myself. But not for long.
Cause I saw a bunch of morons coming down the opposite forest. I knew at once that they were my friends.
And this would be the little rock that got me through the day
