Around the World in 50 Years Read Online Free Page B

and barbed wire. Ben Bella’s palace was surrounded by concrete tank traps and stout walls manned by half a hundred troops brandishing Russian machine guns.
    We searched for the attractive campsites of the tourist brochure, but those sites were also victims of the war for independence that had despoiled the coast around Algiers with barbed wire, minefields, and watchtowers. We were forced to drive 15 miles to find a clear beach, where we set up our camper and rushed for the Mediterranean, eager to wash off the sand and sweat of a week of driving.
    Steve plunged in first—and screamed for us to stop. The water was alive with leeches—wriggling, slimy, segmented worms as long as my foot—thousands of hungry black bloodsuckers. We ran out immediately, but Steve was in too far. By the time he made it back to shore there were two hot dog–sized wrigglers clinging to his legs and another, big as a sausage, sucking blood from his back. I pulled them off and cleansed his wounds. We retreated to the camper, utterly dejected.
    Later that night, we sat around our dismal campsite getting ready for the next long stretch, to Cairo. Steve was studying maps, I was selecting photos for the sponsors, Woodrow was adding up his expenses, and the nurses were packing their knapsacks. Miles across the bay, the lights of Algiers beamed steady in the clear air, but everywhere else around us was absolute darkness, broken only by the glow of our hissing gas lanterns.
    Suddenly Woodrow jumped up, screaming and holding his neck. Something had bitten him hard, and blood was oozing from the wound. But what? What kind of creature could slash a person’s neck on a North African beach without being seen?
    As I bandaged Woodrow’s wound, I heard a faint warning buzz about ten yards away, like a rattlesnake, but lower in pitch. I turned toward the sound and saw a blur of black leap from the beach at my head. It caromed off the gas lantern and vanished. It was terrifying. We’d later be confronted by elephants in heat and tarantulas in our trousers, but we had no idea what demonic creature was attacking us now, and there’s nothing more frightening than the unknown.
    We waited, tense and sweating: two minutes, five, ten. Then another black buzz jumped at us. It grazed Steve on the chest and he swatted it to the beach and pinned it with his boot. It was one of the most hideous creatures I’ve ever seen, more a monster than any child of Nature. It was about five inches across, dark chocolate brown, with prominent front pincers and several sets of smaller side legs. It had the general shape of a crab, the hairy appearance of a spider, and some sort of rear wings that enabled it to fly or spring up to five feet high and 20 feet forward. And it died hard: Steve smashed the one at his foot ten times with an entrenching tool before it was finally stilled.
    Our flashlights exposed a seething army of these things crawling toward us, but not before one of them sprung at me and nipped my hand. They were attracted to light, so we extinguished our lanterns and sat in the dark until we drowsed into nightmares of minefields and leeches and flying monsters.
    The next morning brought no relief, for with it came mobs of unwashed, unruly kids, all curious to see the foreigners who were living on the beach, and all with a touch of larceny in their little hearts. What with two cars and trailers loaded with gear, we were thankful, when we took inventory that evening, that we’d lost only a can opener and a stack of paper plates.
    We also lost the nurses that day, though not to looters: They were due back at their hospitals in London. We were sad as we watched their steamer sail for Marseilles. Ours was hardly a trip for the frail, and those Kiwis had borne up splendidly. Where others would have complained about the sun, the sand, the bugs, the food, and the flying crabs, Barbara, Mira, and Liz seldom lost their high spirits or good humor, a