VH1.COM

Thu. 03 31. 2005 2:00 PM EST

There are a few qualities Matthew McConaughey doesn't share with his Sahara character, Dirk Pitt. "I'm not a huge history buff like he is," says the Texas actor. "And I'm pretty lucky -- but he's real lucky. And then of course there's romance: I occasionally get the girl," he laughs.  "But Dirk always gets the girl!"
Chat with the star of Dazed and Confused and How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, and you'll discover he's every inch the footloose adventurer he plays in Sahara. The Hollywood scene isn't for him. He'd prefer to roll up his backpack and take a solo trip down the Amazon. "I could live there the rest of my life," he says.

Filming Sahara in Morocco was just another opportunity to carry on his romance with Africa. And whaddya know, he got the girl (co-star Penelope Cruz) in the end, too. McConaughey spoke to VH1 about the allure of the desert life.

THE MEANING OF SAHARA

"Sahara" means nowhere. They say if you go out into the middle of the desert for 24 hours, you lose your memory. So I would go out and hang in the desert. And you do lose your memory. At first it's scary as hell ... then all of a sudden it becomes liberating, because you're like [puts on a slurred voice] "Oh, this is great! I'm nowhere but right here." Then you localize a little bit. You don't speak the same vocabulary, but you speak the same language. You start to notice that great thing that everyone notices on any trip if you go long enough, which is, "Hey, we're all doing the same thing. We got different ways of doing it, but we're all trying to take of ourselves, put a roof over our heads, and stay healthy."

THAT DESERT VIBE

You're sitting out in the middle of the desert under a full moon, you got a drum and some food and some wine. Up walk three nomads -- two of them on foot and one of them on a camel. Your pulse doesn't rise one bit; you understand that this is not a scary place. These are nomads. They show up in the middle of the night, you sit down, you share some food, you share some wine, bang on the drum a little bit. They hang out. You sit there and make hand motions at each other for a little while. You almost start communicating. Actually, you are communicating. Then one guy gets back onto his camel and the other two walk off into the night and you never see them again. Mystical things like that are kind of poetic. You go, "Man, that's living."

THE FESTIVAL IN THE DESERT

I went to Mali's Festival in the Desert three weeks before we started shooting Sahara.  It's a musical festival held north of Timbuktu. Half the people come from the South. Everyone who comes from the desert side arrives on camel. Everyone camps out, for three days and three nights. It's wild, man! You know the West African guitarist Ali Farka Toure? Well, the first reason I went to Mali six years ago, was to find him. So I go back and I'm walking around and I hear this song I recognize coming from this little tent. It's like two in the morning. I walk over and I dip beneath this tent, and there's Ali on guitar with one lady and this one kid who they called "The Freak." The Freak was this man-woman, who everyone in the community took care of. He was insane. His body and his genes had been all mixed up. So there was Ali, those two people and myself. I sat down in front of the fire and he played solo for about an hour. The festival concert was great, but sitting down under a tent in front of the fire with Ali? That was righteous.

A UNIVERSAL DIALECT

Ali's music is my favorite transport. All music transports, but Ali is speaking five different African dialects. I understand some of the words, but I don't really know what he's talking about. I don't read the liner notes until after I hear the music. There's this album he did with Ry Cooder called Talking Timbuktu. There's one song on it called "Ai Du." I think it's the most beautiful love song in the world. I fell in love with it, man! Morning, night, anytime, it just puts me in a place that's so simple, man. So I open up the liner notes and the whole song is not a traditional love song. He writes that it's about trust: "Trust in your fellow man, and you cannot trust others until you trust yourself." I'm like, Well, it is a love song! Because I don't understand every bit of the lyrics, I'm able to let my imagination run wild. My own lyrics, poems and life experiences come into my own head. Then I look at what he was talking about and see if we're snuggling there on what we're talking about. And we are.

HOW TO RIDE A CAMEL

I won money racing camels in Mali! Well, I didn't win money, but we did bet. This guy said he would give me his wallet, we raced and I won. He came off and gave me his wallet. I was like, "Well, here -- you can have my watch as well." I just gave it to him. The secret to riding a camel is that your legs are your shocks. In a horse you have stirrups left and right of you. On a camel, you put your bare feet up on its neck. As it runs and gallops and its neck goes up and down, you keep your balance. You move forward and backward, with the shocks of your legs dipping with the camel's run. I'm telling you this, man: I couldn't have done it the first week I was in Mali. But you get over there in the desert for a couple of weeks and you get right, you know what I mean? All of a sudden you go, "Okay. I'm not worried about all the other bullsh*t and luxuries that I had back there. It's a camel. We're in the desert. I'll get on it. This works." And it does.

Sahara opens nationwide on April 8.