The House

(Continued)

Half an hour walking through dry, scratchy brush got us to the outhouse - we had seen from a little way off that it had no roof, but as we got to it it became clear that it was missing a couple of walls too making it just as much a rubble pile as a building.

It was full of more of the nasty, harsh scrub, but i climbed through to the only interior corner left to find a pile of ancient, sun-faded rubbish and a partial skeleton which was very old and brittle.

No drug money.

Anywhere.

More relevantly there wasn't anywhere we could sleep, so we trudged back to the junction while the sun was setting slowly.

I still have no idea how, but Kev told me he could see a nice clear patch of ground off the road in the brush.

I couldn't see at all what he was looking at (and still couldn't when I looked back in the light of day the next morning), but thought it sounded good.

Sure enough there was a flat, hard patch of clear desert floor which even had a small tree-like bush on it's edge.

As we laid out our sleeping bags it became obvious that insects were going to be an issue.

Separate to our hobo stove fire I made a smoky, insect-repelling fire from a tumbleweed I'd brought from the road and we laid our bags either side of that.

As Kevin put down his bag and laid back on it I saw a large, bent piece of metal under the foot of his bag.

I knew it was metal because throughout my life I've come to recognise the solid, metallic shininess inherent in metal things, but I suppose it was dark…

"Is that your metal thing under your bag?" I asked, pointing.

As he calmly lifted the foot of his bag he replied "No Ed, that's not mine, that's a snake."

After a quick poke and inspection by torchlight Kev picked it up by what was assumed not to be the dangerous end and chucked it into the brush.

While we were cooking I realised I hadn't filled up my water pouch that day, it had a couple of litres in it, and we used most of that making rice and cocoa.

We'd drank my Sigg bottle dry in the heat of the day, as well as the litre in Kev's bottle.

It became obvious that water was our primary concern, if we didn't get a lift somewhere tomorrow it could be dangerous.

We quickly convinced ourselves that the volleyball team would have a well-stocked beer fridge in their minibus, and were probably getting on the road early to make the most of the day.

It was the first night we hadn't been hassled by wild dogs, but a huge thunderclap soon put paid to any celebrations.

I strung up the tarp from the bushy-tree-thing and we got out of our bags to watch the light show and our impending lack of sleep approach.