I-n-Belbel Hotels

Hotel for trekkers: "All stars Hotel" for hikers

When you hike, all you have is a thin (2 cm) polyurethane foam mattress and a very good sleeping bag, designed for polar climate, as the Sahara can be almost polar at night.

Never put your sleeping bag in an oued, not even on the banks of an oued and more generally close to vegetation. The hazard of flash flood is low but there are nevertheless sad stories of people drowned in the desert. When there are tufts of plants, that means that they can get water from underneath. Animals live in the tufts : mouse, snakes, etc, then stay away from any plants.

The third photo shows a place that should never be taken as a night bivouac!

Sand look comfortable and "soft". This is wrong. When you sleep on sand, you will soon discover that it is actually as hard as any other rock! On one occasion (one of the first travels I was in charge of everything), I hade found a large ditch in the sand. I felt that would be a nice place, soft and sheltered from the wind. Right, but when the wind blows, even lightly and collects some sand, when it slows, it let the sand fall down. A ditch is the perfect place to collect this sand. I remember that I awoke and opened my eyes… Argh… my orbits were full of sand and when I opened my eyelids…

Never put your sleeping bag close to rocks and large stones. This is the perfect place for scorpions.
Then, the best place is a flat place without any sand, without any stones nor gravel (BTW, a small toy plastic rake is an efficient tool to remove the gravel under you mattress!). The flattest the best!

• Opinion of Price: N/A
• Related to: Road Trip
• Written February 21, 2007

Hotel for trekkers!

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