Friday - spiders, bread and chilled beer

The last day of trekking

Our final full day of trekking. Last night was amazing; after we'd collected firewood our berbers lit a fire to heat the sand below. They then cleared the embers and buried bread dough in the sand to bake. Once it was done they cleaned off all the ash and sand, and we ate it for our dinner - it tasted wonderful! More star gazing to the sound of Snow Patrol and Mumford and Sons - Graham seems to have a bag like Mary Poppins', and it contains almost every piece of technology you can imagine, including iPod speakers!

Quite a few people had hoped to sleep outside, but the area where we were staying was very remote and one of the berbers had seen a spider which has a poisonous bite, so our guide Khaleed told us we had to sleep in our tents with the doors zipped up, and what Khaleed says is law out here. It was a stiflingly hot night, so many of us didn't sleep well.

Waiting for our bread to come out of the 'oven'

This morning has been incredibly tough, and unfortunately some of the group aren't feeling too great with upset stomachs and nausea, so it's been really difficult. This is the stage where it truly does feels like a massive challenge, and the point at which we feel we are really having to dig deep in return for all that sponsorship that people have so generously given.

We are now resting and rehydrating while we eat and wait for the temperature to drop a bit. We will then head off to our last camp.

Can you guess what our trekkers are saying?

Whilst today is really, really hard, it will be sad to leave all this behind us tomorrow. The desert is an incredibly beautiful place, and the simplicity of life here has a definite appeal. At the same time we are all dreaming of hot showers and a chilled beer of glass or wine!