We woke up with the sun, moved our mattresses so were in the shade of the wall and went back to sleep until 9ish. We had breakfast downstairs by the pool, relaxed and used the wifi to sort pictures, email and find places to couch surf until it was time to leave for our desert camel trek. It was heaven to not be going places or doing anything, it was also pretty good to wash my hair which took a lot of combing to get it ready to wash, I desperately needed conditioner but had to make do with the rancid argan oil I picked up in Marrakesh.
We had a good chicken dinner before loading up an overnight bag with 4 bottles of water and a toothbrush (we didn't use) getting on our camels and heading out into the Sahara desert. Getting on my camel was a mission in itself, let alone staying on when he got up and started walking, and I had to be pushed up, very undignified.
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| From Merzouga, The Sahara Desert, Morocco |
So we set off, me, Nils' dad, Nils and D in that order, into the desert to sleep under the stars. The trek which lasted between an hour and a half to two hours was amazing, the camel riding took a lot of effort particularly going down slopes, staying on involved some serious muscle clenching (which I can still feel now two days later) but the scenery more than made up for it. The colour of the sand was spectacular a warm honey gold with dry grass scattered about, the dunes were so beautiful, wrinkled, wavy, soft and crisp all at once. I tried to take pictures while rolling with my camel and keep an eye for downward slopes lest I should accidentally fall off the front and break the poor beasts neck, and in doing so lost my camera lens. After that my list of things to keep an eye on – including batting away the hard petrol blue desert flies – including shielding the lens from the sand and my sweaty arm and untangle it when I wanted to take pictures – which was often (what we posted on the web album is less than a third of what we took).
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| From Merzouga, The Sahara Desert, Morocco |
We arrived at the camp, slide gratefully off our camels and then followed Nils out while he tested his custom made sand board.
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| From Merzouga, The Sahara Desert, Morocco |
We went back to the camp, which was basically a wall of carpets surrounding a floor of carpets with a small covered area housing some low tables and cushions on the floor, I was expecting a roof of some sort but I guess it would only collect the heat of the day so we slept underneath the stars again. Dinner was a beef and egg tajine, with the odd cricket, and came with salad and rice, good but very late in the night. Our guide and another man at the campsite (the only other man) played some music before dinner, banging on some drums and clanging some metals disc things, I really wanted to like it but the discy things were a wee bit too clangy and I was quite relieved when they stopped playing. Djalma and I, sorry Ali Baba and his Fatima, slept together separate from the others and watched for shooting stars. We slept so well, the desert was really quiet and not nearly as infested with spiders (that I saw) or creepy crawlies as I had imagined.
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| From Merzouga, The Sahara Desert, Morocco |
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