Part 2: Our first days on the Sahara Desert

In Part 2 of this four-part series from gardening writer Henry Homeyer’s memoir-in-progress, he tells about traveling across the Sahara in 1972, using public transportation — cargo vehicles — and by hitchhiking.  Homeyer, of New Hampshire, ended up living in Africa for 10 years, three years as a Peace Corps volunteer in Cameroon, two short contracts with the U.S. Agency for International Development  and more than four years as the Peace Corps country director in Mali.

By Henry Homeyer
© 2026 Telegraph Publishing LLC

We arrived in Algiers in the late afternoon. First order of business was to find a cheap place to stay.

My wife Gretchen and I rejected the first hotel we saw. There was a sharp odor of ozone, which I was pretty sure was the smell of electrical failure. I imagined the hotel burning down during the night, so we continued on.

The next place was better, though not nice by any standards. The sheets were questionable and the bathroom down the hall was not clean, but we were tired, so we took the room.

We stayed in Algiers for a few days to get every last thing we would need to cross that vast expanse from there to Agadez, Niger, the first sizeable town in sub-Saharan Africa — some 2,800 km — 1,750 miles — away. We knew that Agadez was a one-horse town.

We found a bar/cafe in Algiers that served cheap meals, and we went to it every night for dinner — partly because we met other travelers there who, like us, planned to hitchhike or pay for rides on trucks across the desert. A few spoke English, but all spoke some French (which we knew as well). French is the second official language in Algeria, a remnant of colonial days. The other travelers were a motley crew, but I guess we fit right in.

One morning we got up, made coffee in the room and had a good laugh. We both had come to the conclusion that we didn’t really need anything else for the trip ahead of us, and we hadn’t for a couple of days. We were just scared silly about that first step on a long, uncertain voyage. So, we packed our knapsacks, paid our bill and took a bus to the edge of town. We walked south, and each time a truck came along, we put out our thumbs.

The first ride was a good one. It was a truck carrying soft drinks, beer and cheap red Algerian wine in liter bottles. The driver spoke French well and was curious about us — and about America. We traveled with him for hours and, when the sun went down, he stopped and climbed up onto the load of the truck.

He returned with a bottle of wine, which he gave to us. It had a bottle cap, not a cork. He was a good Muslim and didn’t drink alcohol, but Gretchen and I sipped it as we bumped along. Our dinner that night was probably a baguette and the processed spreadable cheese called La Vache Qui Rit (The Laughing Cow). It didn’t need to be refrigerated, and it served us well. The other staple we bought along the way was canned sardines. Both we found in small shops everywhere.

The road south from Algiers started out paved, but after the town of El Golea, it turned to sand. We gave up trying to find free rides and bought tickets on a “bus” to Tamanrasset, the last oasis in Algeria. The vehicle was a large box truck of some sort that an enterprising fellow had converted to carry passengers. To serve as seats, he had installed thick, 6-inch-wide planks on short sections of iron pipes attached to flanges, which were screwed into the planks and to the floor.

He used a cutting torch to create big jagged “windows” in the side of the truck, but there was no glass, so the hot Sahara wind came in. Plenty of sand and dirt blew in, too, filling our eyes and noses. There weren’t many other options, though, and the price was minimal. Hitchhiking wasn’t working.

Just a dozen of us were on the truck, including a French gendarme, in uniform, and seemingly traveling with a young man from Niger. It seemed odd that they were traveling together, and neither was interested in talking to us.

Each night, the truck stopped and we set up our tent, unrolled our sleeping bags and camped out. Most other passengers had only a single blanket to curl up in on the sand. One morning, after sleeping on a high plateau following a near 100-degree day, we awoke to our canteen water partially frozen.

When we got to the oasis town of In Salah (Arabic for Allah Willing), we found a nice, clean place to stay for just a few dollars a night. We were delighted. The town was lovely — greenery, gardens, date palms everywhere. There were even springs and pools of water. The buildings were made of adobe and were, apparently, very old, but well-maintained.

Returning to the truck in the morning, we were told the truck would not be leaving. It took a while, but I finally got an explanation. The young man with the gendarme was a prisoner being deported from France to Niger. No plane ticket would be wasted on him. However, during the night, he ran away even though we were hundreds of kilometers from the next source of water and food. A posse was formed, and we had a day of rest.

So, we spent the day in In Salah and another comfortable night at our lodging. With the prisoner finally captured, we would travel on the next. He was handcuffed to the gendarme all day and night for two or three days until we arrived at Tamanrasset. We figured the gendarme was also being punished for something he did.

Last week: The 10-year desert journey begins

Next week: 600 miles of nothing.