I thoroughly enjoy writing about our travels. But then again I enjoy writing about everything under the sun. And also a bit more which I make up along the way. But having a twisted mind also means that I love to add that little extra twist to my stories. And the twist here is that although the main topic clearly deals with heat, I have also tried to look at this factor from a cultural perspective.

Let me start my tale on the 11th of September 2000, when we were standing right beneath the Twin Towers in lower Manhattan, admiring their enormous majesty. Yes, exactly one year before the tragic event, day for day, we marvelled at their immense and staggering stature.

For it was from New York that we flew to Los Angeles to stay with my cousin Peter and his family in their 45,000 acre estate which is called California. Has anyone ever heard of it by any chance? California? Yes that is theirs! Well in reality they have a very typical and lovely house South of LA in a smart, quiet and leafy suburb, along with large garden and pool. What else could one want in life.

And it was from their house that we hired a large American car and headed out for a long and exciting trip visiting the Mohave Desert, Las Vegas, Death Valley, the Sierra Nevada, Yosemite National Park, San Francisco and the Pacific coast including Bug Sur, before returning to Los Angeles.

As the main topic here is heat, very obviously inspired by the annoying heat wave we are currently having to endure, you can probably guess that the point of attention here is Death Valley.

This is the lowest, driest and hottest place in North America and one of the very hottest places on Earth. As we were there in September, we were expecting it to be extremely hot, however just by chance when we were passing through it just happened to be rather cool. If I remember correctly it was only somewhere in the low to mid 20’s, so really not hot at all.

However as we drove through the stunning and harsh landscape of endless flat shimmering white salt plains for as far as the eye can see, interspersed by gentle pale yellow sand dunes in the distance, there was one thing we just couldn’t help noticing. That at very frequent intervals there were large signs warning visitors about the heat and its many dangers.

The signs told travellers not to go for walks, not to get out of their car, not even to open the doors or windows, but to remain at all times inside their car, keeping it constantly shut, with the air conditioning switch on.

As it was a very pleasant temperature when we were there, even bordering on coolish, all these warnings seemed very amusing to us. We were later told that similarly to much of this type of signage in the U.S., this also serves as a form of disclaimer in a ‘you have been warned’ sort of way.

We saw many such signs in various places, sometimes even seemingly in the middle of nowhere. We would be walking in what we thought was virgin wilderness when we came across a sign saying “Do not leave the path”, or “Watch your step, rough terrain ahead”. Even swimming can be a complicated affair and unlike what we are used to in Malta and most other places, you cannot swim where you want, but only in specifically designated sections of the coast.

Yes the U.S. Is full of such physical and spatial limitations and as most people know it is fraught with indemnity, risk and suing procedure issues. So warning signage is a standard feature wherever you go.

Back to the heat topic, the Americans also do not accept the notion of feeling hot. In their book one should never feel hot. So air conditioning has long been a standard fixture whereby they prefer to live in a regulated environment rather than a natural one. For most of them feeling hot and sweating is not something modern man should ever be made to endure. This is the national psyche and the norm for much of the U.S. If it’s hot you don’t open the window but you close it and switch on the climate control. In the same way that if you need something you do not walk but you jump into your car and drive there instead.

Personally I am more of a cold weather person I suppose. I seem to function much better in cooler climates and even enjoy the extreme cold for short periods of time. On the other hand I simply love deserts. There is something wild and enchanting about them, even spiritual I find. Their magnificent grandiose landscapes are captivating beyond belief. I have often found them to very much resemble the sea in so many ways.

I have been lucky enough to experience several desserts around the world including the Libyan desert which is truly a wondrous place. In my much younger days I had the enormous pleasure of driving around it quite extensively, allowing me to take in and experience its raw and spectacular beauty, which varies in so many ways from one location to another.

My main comparison with Death Valley however, interestingly paired up with harshly contrasting cultural aspects, concerns Namibia. We traveled to this magnificent far off land in 2008, where we had the immense fortune of acquainting ourselves to the Kalahari and the Namib Deserts.

From what we saw at least, the latter was far more spectacular, especially with the coastal dunes running down the Southern Atlantic seaboard and catalogued as being amongst the highest sand dunes on Earth, elevating them not only in sheer height but also to World Heritage Site status. Many of them have even been named and have been endowed with a particular gender and also a character of sorts, such as Dune 7, Big Daddy and Big Mama. They rise well above 1,000 feet, with Dune 7 at approximately 1,250 feet measuring exactly one and a half times the height of Dingli Cliffs at its highest point from the sea far down below. Their majestic and spectacular beauty is tremendously enhanced by their striking red colour, especially at specific times of day.

Unlike Death Valley when it was just my wife and myself, there were six of us in Namibia traveling together, three couples in all. We had arranged for a stunning custom planned itinerary with our own vehicle and driver/guide throughout our three week stay. This included deserts and safaris and swimming in the cold Atlantic surrounded by huge bobbing seals.

Our guide’s name was Lefi, a local of fully black African origin and I say this as there are many different looking races and tribes including the bushmen who are very different, as well as many white Afrikaners similar to neighbouring South Africa.

He was exactly what you would imagine when you think of a Kenyan athlete. He was tell, very slender, yet sinewy and muscular. They still have to invent a word for this level of fitness and being in his mid twenties he was most definitely in his prime. I could easily imagine him popping up to Cairo and back in a quick sprint for a bottle of milk.

He was sweet and gentle, quite soft spoken and had many dreams. In typical African fashion he discussed his personal life, his feelings and emotions in their refreshing uninhibited way.

So half way through our itinerary we were visiting Sossusvlei which is the Mecca of the Namib Desert and where many of the highest spectacular dunes are found. While dining at the stylish lodge that night, Lefi informed us that we would be leaving very early the next morning. These trips were best when you left long before dawn to get there at sunrise when the dunes are showered in red and golden light.

Our only problem was that it was the birthday of one of our party so we couldn’t not have a drink or two. Well here comes the shameful part of my story, for alas there always seems to be one. This is deep in the Namibian desert, it is not Ibiza or Costa del Sol where lager louts tend to congregate. It mainly attracts adventurous individuals who love nature and exercise and the great outdoors. Well we happen to love both!

So being the boundlessly eclectic individuals that we are, we descended on the lodge’s tiny understocked and unsuspecting bar before you could even say meerkat. And this very experience was my one true and absolute defining moment in life, for the expression ‘drinking the bar dry’.

Although the six of us started together, the more sensible and cautious couple abandoned us relatively early, thinking of the ungodly hour we had to wake up. But the other four of us went for it with a vengeance and besides for ourselves we bought countless drinks for the lodge’s owner who we literally had to carry to his room at a certain point and continued drinking without him, serving our own drinks. There was also a constant trickle of bewildered guests who we managed to rope in for a couple of quick ones and a lewd joke or two. You see the drinks there were ridiculously inexpensive and we found that wherever we stayed they always forgot to put anything on our bill! In each successive lodge we used to make bets between us if anyone’s bill would have something or another of all the extras we had consumed, and in most cases there was nothing at all. Not a very lucrative business I thought, running a lodge in Namibia with such staff managing it for you, but sorry it wasn’t really my problem. In this particular case even the owner was drunk and had left his entire lifesavings in our hands, poor sod. His name was Cristos and he was a large rugged white Afrikaner, but a light weight in the bar, especially compared to our exceptional talents.

So while he was still there we started on white wine but quickly downed the couple of bottles he had. So then we drank all his red wine, before we hit all his spirits bottle by bottle, of which he mercifully only had one of each, until there simply was nothing left. I really don’t know what got into us, but it was one of those unexpected nights where we were simply having so much fun that we didn’t want it to end. Cristos joined in and in typical absence of business mindedness, for each two rounds we bought he bought us one, then along came a resident who bought us one too. And all this until the owner literally collapsed and we carried him to his room and tucked him up in his bed. We returned back to the bar and all that was left were some beers. So we looked at each other, shrugged our shoulders and said, might as well finish this job to the end.

So we downed the last remaining beers and had literally drank the bar dry leaving no alcoholic beverage left. I very vaguely remember staggering wildly akin to being on a ship in rough seas. And by the time we made it back to our ‘cabins’ the clock said half past three. Lefi had told us to be up by four for coffee, before we left for our morning’s activities.

It was one of those moments where you desperately want to somehow put the clock back at least by a few hours, but what was done was done.

Just half an hour later there was mad banging on our door which somehow managed to wake us up. Get up, get up cried Lefi. This was meant to be one of the main highlights of our trip and having traveled across the world for this we really didn’t want to miss it. For we are outdoor people and love nature too tongue emoticon

So by some unknown and powerful force of magic we all somehow managed to get back out of bed, obviously still totally drunk, as we would remain for much of the day, and made our way on all fours to the breakfast room. Only there was no early breakfast for obvious reasons, which were snoring drunk in bed.

So we somehow get into our vehicle together along with our cheerful wide eyed early retiring couple and start off with an hour’s bumpy journey over rough tracks through the initially pitch black wilderness. How I didn’t throw up remains a mystery, especially as I was all the time so close.

Lefi had luckily brought a couple of flasks of coffee which we gratefully sipped along the way.

By the time we got there I thankfully felt some small signs of recovery, but when I turned around and looked at the birthday girl she was green. As expected, as soon as we arrived at our destination she brought everything back up on the sand. And she sat there under a baobab tree as white as Lefi’s teeth, passing in and out of consciousness, as her husband poured cold water over her head and neck.

So they stayed behind as Lefi hopped along at the speed of greased lightening, or should I say black ice. He darted up and down enormous sand dunes and dashed across hard open spaces, expecting us to keep up. By late morning when we retuned next to our abandoned friends, we were all looking and feeling the same way she was earlier that morning. Gasping for air and soaked in sweat we explained to them our tiresome but wondrous adventures bestowed upon us by the gorgeous red dunes. While we desperately were trying to catch our breath and guzzling down gallons of water, Lefi was doing press-ups and sit-ups out in the sun just for fun. I imagine he was still warming up after only some 4 hours of backbreaking strenuous exercise, because believe me he still hadn’t even yet broken out in a sweat.

Now this was January which is the height of their Summer and it was virtually noon. He carried a thermometer with him everywhere, probably just to scare tourists and sure enough it was exactly 40 degrees in the shade! Yes it was dry, which was most certainly the only reason we survived. But 40 degrees is 40 degrees and we were constantly trekking up and down enormous steep dunes in the sun. And don’t forget that we are talking of very loose sand here where with every step your foot sinks in up to your ankle.

I cannot describe our state when we returned, while Lefi looked like he was sitting in a fully air conditioned boardroom of sorts. But much to my disgust and horror this was just the beginning and the worst part of the story is yet to come!

One of the worst decisions I have been known to make, was not even the one to stay up all night drinking, in spite of the day ahead. It was at this moment when Lefi said that he was taking us to see the neighbouring renowned dry lakes which at this time of year were bone dry and covered in white salt. He posed a very simple question, asking us if we wanted to drive or walk. He was taking the vehicle there anyway, but according to him it was quite a long way round, while if we walked it was a short trek in a straight line.

I confirmed with him twice that it really wasn’t far, before I made one of the worst decisions in my life. So my wife and the birthday girl took the vehicle there while the other four of us decided to walk.

We walked and we walked and we walked and we walked. Did I say that we walked? Yes and then we walked a bit more. It just went on and on for ever. Through tracks and dunes, around rocky outcrops and across immense dry lake beds we walked in the terrible heat. And of course all this in the early afternoon sun when it was 40 degrees in the shade. We were obviously totally lost and just heading aimlessly in any direction. We even lost the other couple somewhere along the way and it was just the birthday girl’s husband and me.

It was one of the roughest moments in my life. Towards the end of it I couldn’t think straight, my vision was blurred and blackening and all I could hear was load ringing sounds in my ears. My friend Danny helped me struggle slowly through the sand, literally propping me up in a spectacular two men struggling across the desert before they die – epic movie scene.

All we had left was one tiny bottle of water, which by then was hotter than tea, to the extent that it was not even drinkable. I didn’t even hear Lefi calling. My mind had totally shut down and I was very simply on my very last few steps. But Danny somehow brought me to, insisting that Lefi had finally found us. I couldn’t even see him there, but somehow my survival instinct pushed me to continue, along with both of their helping hands.

When we finally got back to the vehicle I collapsed on the seat and was fed gradual but copious amounts of water….

So back at the bar that evening, and I am not joking of course. For very luckily my excesses have been largely based on an exceedingly quick recovery mechanism. But we did not drink so much of course. Mainly because Christos was now avoiding us like the plague and had spread the word amongst all the residents that we were very dangerous individuals. So we were only served one or two drinks at the bar, by a frowning, rough and scary big black mama, who was obviously briefed to hit us across the face with her massive arms if we ever got out of line.

But I managed to grab Lefi and sat him down next to us. And I explained to him about the signs in Death Valley. About fat lazy first world air conditioning dwelling couch potatoes. I tried to make him understand that his oneness with nature, with this climate and terrain, his extraordinary fitness, his unparalleled tolerance to the heat, his ability of never even drinking any liquids throughout much of the day, was not shared by many. I explained that as a tour guide of such physically inadequate individuals as us, he must come to understand the inexplicable differences between him and us. And I said it all with a gin and tonic in hand and a wicked sparkle in my eye.

He looked at me blankly and I’m not quite sure how much of my sermon stuck. But hopefully my following emails to him when I got home will have some impact and even might save the life of a tourist or two. I sent him photos of the signs in Death Valley, reminding him that the temperature there was only 22.