Sun on Your Silly Face
A desire, a sin, a parable.
There is nothing and I mean nothing that feels so desperately indulgent as a cheeky winter getaway. Especially to somewhere sunny. Just ask our pal Parker Posey.
My birthday is two days after Valentine’s Day so I have a great excuse for such frivolity just when no one can bear winter any longer.
That said, I’m less-and-less partial to the cookie-cutter winter sun resort package deal myself and with work demands and kids at granny’s there wasn’t exactly time for a 12 hour flight to many of our bucket-list destinations. So with the help of my friends at Mr. and Mrs. Smith, we settled on Caravan by Habitas, in Dakhla.
Why Dakhla? Curiosity mainly.
Well, and the basics. It’s a four and a half hour direct flight due south from Paris. No jet lag, no flight changes, guaranteed sun once you get there (it rains exactly three times a year, I’m told). Dakhla perches just above the Tropic of Cancer, occupying the unique space where the Sahara Desert meets the Atlantic Ocean. A kitesurfer’s paradise —wind year-round and a dreamy landscape of romantic sand dunes hosting camels and horses, spices eternally moving through the air, a lagoon of drifting kites on one side of the peninsula Dakhla occupies, and jutting cliffs down to the Atlantic on the other.
One thing I must mention. There is not what you would call an international longterm consensus about what country the city of Dakhla and the peninsula that extends beyond it should belong to. You can read more about that here and here. And yes, Rachida Dati was there at the same time as us so don’t tell me there aren’t celeb sightings.
But seriously. I spoke to a lot of locals. One thing they’re sure of : they want you to come and experience their culture. To spend money, to enjoy, and to give Dakhla its own international name and the chance to flourish.
Rightly so. Dakhla is little rougher around the edges and wilder than, say, Marrakech FYI—and long may it not turn into Disneyland. However, I didn’t feel unsafe at all, and the locals and foreign-owned establishments (Our Habitas Caravan Dakhla, where we stayed, was founded by eco-conscious Brit Oliver Ripley of Tulum fame) were incredibly welcoming. Our Habitas’s ethos is about supporting local communities by imaging unique hotel experiences that honour the cultural rituals. At the risk of sounding like I’m drinking all the hippy-dippy cool-aid mint tea/patting myself on the proverbial dumbass whitegirl back, this did feel very genuine. Nearly everyone employed at the hotel was from the vicinity, and excited to explain their local cuisine, tea and bread-making traditions, and how exactly you’re meant to dismount a camel.
In short, I learnt about a new place, an interesting one I knew little about —or as much as one could hope to in four and a half days. You don’t get that at a Caribbean all-inclusive. No shade: that’s no-doubt where we’ll find ourselves when we start travelling with the kids a bit more once’s Arthur’s three (the golden age for airplanes), but yeah. Dakhla. Very glad we went.
But back to the weird general hedonism of jumping countries to go steal a bit of someone else’s sun whilst everyone back home freezes under Elsa’s eternal winter. There’s the indulgence of it, the footprint, the total investment in one’s physical pleasure, and then there’s my recent mid-thirties cliche’d realisation that I shouldn’t be in the sun, any more than I should be smoking cigarettes or, I don’t know, taking ecstasy at a Full Moon party (I don’t.)
“Not a drop of sun on your face. Ever!” Cynthia Rivas, dermatologist and facialist to Paris Hilton, Olivia Palermo et al. told me recently, my face cupped between her hands as she stood behind me, so that if I rolled my eyes all the way back in my head I could just perceive the glow of her milky-smooth cheeks, and flawless pores.
“So you never put your face in the sun, like, ever? Not even on summer holiday?” No, it seems she does not. “I let my body warm in the sun a bit, wearing factor 50 obviously. But never my face, it’s always shaded.” I stare at her pores again. “I just can’t unsee what I’ve seen in my years practicing dermatology” she adds. Her cleansing routine advice, and the IS Clinical products she recommended have improved my acne, scarring, and skin texture ten-fold since our rendezvous last September. It’s safe to assume she’s onto something.
But then I have my health check-in with Dr. Anders from Turi Health, a practical, tailor-made healthcare program founded by a friend of a friend who kindly offered to give me a test-drive of their state-of-the art lab queries and proactive health action plans. Dr. Anders sees in my results that my vitamin D levels and iron are a bit low and gives me some common-sense advice, after hearing my routine. “You need to make sure you eat red meat twice a week and get sun on your face every day for fifteen minutes.”
Sun?? On my face!? Cynthia would never! Then again, if you think about the history of man up until like, five minutes ago, not many humans were wandering around in industrial-strength factor fifty and a Helen Kaminski wide-brim. Or nibbling on tailor-made diets. They were eating what they could get their hands on and ostensibly what their bodies craved and needed. I guess we live longer now, and have a wrecked planet to consider, but still. I am making sure to eat the recommended red meat and frankly enjoying it, and given there are many days from November to March in Paris where there is no opportunity whatsoever for those mood-and-body-fixing fifteen minutes of sun, I reckon I stock up on those vitamin D days when I can. Wearing factor fifty. But not necessarily a sun hat.
Anyway here’s what I did wear, if you’re interested.
Adding to my travel list! Trying to plan a bday trip to Morocco in 2 years!
This is in no way, shape or form legit advice but I've always felt that my skin loves a bit of sunshine. Obviously not so much so that I get anywhere near burning, but my pores get smaller, my acne gets better and my oil production feels more balanced.