Sahara Night
It took us two days to get out to Mezouga (the town on the edge of the Sahara) nut only because the tour company decided to take their time getting us there. I'm glad they did. The tour was only 3 days but in that time, we really got to know the other people on our trek. There were 8 dutch college age students who were actually going to school in Delft, a town we biked to when we were in the Netherlands. They had come to Morocco because they were celebrating the finish of their Fraternity's yearbook. At least, six of them were We never figured out what the other two were doing there. There was also a very nice French-Canadian couple named Christine and Brenard. We all had a great time together. On the first day, that night we stayed in a bare bones, freezing hotel on Dante's Gorge, we stopped to see the Kasbah (used along with Medina as a way of saying old, walled city) where tons of Hollywood films and shows were made. The place was made all out of mud and straw and was crowned with a giant stone food storage building. The directors of Gladator, Prince of Persia, Jesus of Nazarith, and the upcoming season of Game Of Thrones have a very good eye for places to film dramas. All of the films listed above were filmed in that town. The next day, we drove on Mezouga and got ready for our camel trek. We were giddy with excitement. WE WERE ON THE EDGE OF THE SAHARA DESERT. It was right there. The stone strewn ground was suddenly covered by orange colored sand which rose up to huge magnitudes. The dunes went on into the distance. No end, nothing flat. The camels were fun but painful to ride. They were just TOO big to ride comfortably. But still, we had 2 hours on a camel in the Sahara desert. What's not to love? We were led in 2 packs of ten or so camels tied together by thick ropes. At the front of each procession, there was a camel guide. Ours was so talkative and not to us. He didn't speak English, French, or Dutch but he did speak Berber (the tribal language) and he used it. He got more cell phone calls in that two hours than I got in my whole life. Of course, that's not saying much as I never get phone calls. We stopped in the middle of the desert, walked over a dune, and saw out camp. Each couple of people got a tent. A couple of the dutch boys slept outside and we got the last laugh about that. Ever heard that it gets a little chilly at night in the desert. Well, chilly is a federal offense of an understatement. It felt as though I was sleeping in the north pole without any clothes on! Our family had a tent to themselves and we all huddled under blankets and slept. Before going to sleep, we had a very odd Tajine that seemed to come back in soup form after the first course! Then, we hiked up a huge dune to look at the stars. The next morning, we got up before the sun and got back on our slow A steads.