I wasn't expecting my first fix of saltwater to be such a drama.
It wasn’t a surf trip. I knew this before we set off, but it was going to be about 25,000km and nearly a year before I was going to catch up with my boards that I’d left at a mate’s place in Singapore, so I snuck one in. Of course I did. It might not have been a surf trip, but we were going through eighteen countries to get from England to Australia, and there was room in the car. I wasn’t expecting my first fix of saltwater to be such a drama though.
Ten countries ticked off and I was already hanging for a surf. We’d just got to Syria after being kicked back by Iran and having to resort to plan B – actually, having to invent plan B. We were fraught and a bit fed up. A fix of sea air and all the associated positive ions was needed. They do have beaches in Syria; they have a massive 60km of coastline that sits on the Med. We set off from Aleppo for what we thought would be an afternoon’s drive to the beach. The motorway and its associated Deathrace2000 style driving got us to the foot of the mountains that parallel the coast with unexpected haste, but by the time we traversed the winding roads we realized that it would be pushing it to get there before dark. We should’ve stopped. It’s always our rule not to drive at night in a foreign country. It was pitch black when we got there.
Trying to find a free-camp to pop up a roof tent is a challenge in the daytime, but night’s darkness makes it all that much harder. All we needed was access onto a beach – we had four wheel drive. After much fruitless searching, we spotted a track heading down between the trees in the direction of the beach. It looked like a winner, but after 500m we come across a chain blocking access. It’s really not worth risking it, so I slid the shift into reverse. This is where it all went tits up. Occasionally there are things that you see that takes your brain needs a moment to process. Some of them take your breath away for all the right reasons, like seeing the Taj Mahal, or Carroll’s snap at Pipe in ’91. But a teenager with camo paint on his face while pointing the biggest machine gun he can carry at the car and shouting in Arabic at the top of his lungs was not one I want to see again. His teeth were the brightest thing about him, being massively illuminated by our two huge spotlights. His aim was firmly at my wife, who sat in the passenger’s seat. He probably thought she was behind the wheel, because we were in a right-hand drive Land Cruiser in a left-hand drive country. He probably thought she was a he. He couldn’t see fuck all because I was blinding him.
My brain was catching up now, and I killed the lights and grabbed a torch which I frantically played between my wife and me. The boy soldier hadn’t stopped screaming, and more of them started appearing from the bushes all running, all carrying guns, and all apparently in their teens. One of them was obviously slightly more in charge than the rest, and he came to the passenger window. I tried to point out that I was driving but they seemed happy hanging out near the blonde blue-eyed side. The original mini militia had calmed down a bit and I tried at this point to say sorry and put the car in reverse. Bad move. Twelve people screaming and pointing guns at us. I turned the engine off.
