Day three of Le Grande Italio-Austalian Tour Du Maroc dawned sunny and bright. Of course, we missed the actual dawn bit (being travelers and all) but the sunny and bright bit showed no signs of abating by the time we got up for breakfast. We had finally found sun, and we only had to go to the desert to find it. After a trip to the market for the customary Vache, Pan and Oranges, we hit the road. We had a special treat in store for us this morning, a trip to the much lauded Le Source Bleu.

We followed the signs and eventually found a plateau overlooking a charming looking little valley, with a glimpse of Bleu below. We stopped the car and took a few photos over the bluff, before being ushered down the road by the locals to Le Source. As we descended down the road we were accosted by several kids, sacrificing their hand-made grass camels to our car. We wound up the window to avoid any more Camel-kaze but eventually we had to get out of the car. A rather frenetic man sold us a ‘ticket’ for the source and another one sidled up beside us, thus introducing himself in the Moroccan way as our guide.

Le Source turned out to be a smallish, shallow pool with a couple of schools of fish swimming around in it. Our new guide dutifully pointed these out to us ‘Water…… Fish…..’. The guide book had advised that in the summer this was a popular swimming haunt. Not sure about swimming but you could sure do some hardcore wading and maybe a little paddling, if you were so inclined. We weren’t, and departed promptly with a car full of new camel friends.

From there it was on through the beautiful Ziz Valley to the desert. The Valley itself was stunning, a gorgeous vista of date palms and irrigated fields, a oasis in the middle of the otherwise dusty red landscape. We followed the valley until it eventually petered out and we were left with nothing but flat, dry horizon. In the distance we saw the golden hills of the Chebbi Erg.

For those unfamiliar with the territory, the Chebbi Erg is Morocco’s only real sand dune desert. Near to the Algerian border, it is the closest and most accessible of the desert landscapes for visiting gringos who are after a real Berber experience. There is even a little gringo town called Merzouga on the edge of it offering camel tours out to the Erg. This is where we were heading to fulfill Vito’s ‘dream’ of a night in the desert. Trying as usual to avoid the gringo rush, we thought we’d check out Rissani, a town about 60kms north of Merzouga that we figured might be a little less populous and thus a little less hassle…. Just goes to show that even the second most travellingest bear in the world can get it wrong sometimes.

Approaching Rissani, we hadn’t even made the trade mark roundabout when the hawkers started. These ones were cleverly armed with little motor scooters so that they could ride along side us hawking. We had picked up about three of these mobile hawkers before reaching the first hotel. Vanessa and Kate went to check out the hotel (completo). In this time (about 3 minutes), Nato, Vito and I (the ‘hombres’) had met at least three new friends all of whom had hotels just five minutes out of town complete with camels, and all of whom just happened to be having a big party that night. Looked as though we might be the only gringos in town.

Unconvinced, we pushed on to the ‘Youth Hostel’ dodging locals and hawkers alike, realising that we had also made the mistake of arriving on market day. We were ushered upstairs by a couple of our more persistent guides, where we were greeted by the hotel proprietor, a somber faced young man who told us that there were no beds available, but that his brother had a hotel, just five minutes out of town.…. When it became apparent that we weren’t going to go for this, he ‘found’ a room that was available but that only slept three. But not to worry, he advised, we could sleep in the communal lounge area, no problem. No problem for you, Vanessa said, but a problem for us! We were just about to head off when he suddenly ‘remembered’ another room that was available ….

We retired downstairs for a group discussion where we were faced with the real drawback of the multi-lingual Moroccans, as every language we spoke in they could understand. In the end we resorted to jumping in the Car of Silence. Where we promptly decided to go to Merzouga.

On the way out of town, we passed the only other gringos in town trying to hitch a ride out… poor buggers..

Another half hour or so across an increasingly desolate landscape and we arrived in Merzouga where we were pleasantly surprised by a quiet street and a sunny café. At first sight there didn’t seem to be any other gringos in town, but nor did there seem to be any hawkers so we sat down for a coffee and watched the young Berber boys going about their business (which at the time involved trying to tow a Mercedes taxi with a 1.6 litre sedan of some kind). Eventually, a hawker turned up but not before the coffee did.

Our new hawker Yusef also had a much more relaxed attitude, something that seemed to be an increasing feature of the Berber (as opposed to Arab) towns. He sort of half-heartedly tried to sell us on his hotel (around the corner) and offered us a camel ride and night in the desert for about 250 dirham. Then he left us to our coffee.. Half an hour in the sun convinced us that we really didn’t want to drive around checking out hotels so we took him up on his offer.

The hotel turned out to be a perfectly reasonable little place around the corner, with double rooms with shower etc for only 50 dirham (about 5 euros, much cheaper than we had found anywhere else). We settled in and then set off to the dunes.

The dunes are really an amazing landscape. We had little picnic of vache, pan and oranges then just hung out for the rest of the afternoon, watching the shadows shift and change over the dunes, and generally accumulating a lot of sand everywhere. We also met a few little Berber hawkers in training trying to sell their wares, which basically consisted of a few fossils of the desert. Vanessa and Vito had very sensibly brought some kids stuff (pens, books, clothes etc) for just this occasion, and one of the Berber kids donated a couple of fossils in exchange for some shirts.

Once the sun went down, we headed to the restaurant for a massive pile of surprisingly good tagine and cous cous. Here we met Bari, who was obviously the boss of the place. Also a rather relaxed Berber, he had unfortunately had a few too many Aussie customers and insisted on calling us ‘Mayte’ at every given opportunity.

We also asked him about camel trips to the Erg and he explained that there were two options, we could either have a full day on camel including a trip to a Berber village for lunch for 600 dirham, or we could have the more basic trip out to the Oasis and a night out in the desert for 400 dirham. This came as a bit of a surprise as we were sure that this second trip was the same one that his mate had offered us for 250 dirham. We told Bari this, but he seemed to insist that it would be 400 and that if anyone could do it for less, he would give us a camel (an offer that we later forgot to collect on..). We told him we would shop around and left it at that.

About half an hour later Yusef returned (obviously sent by Bari to try to salvage some business from the gringos) actually the original 250 dirham oasis he had originally offered us was only an hour away by camel and not as good as the 400 dirham one. BUT because we were Italians (and Australians) we were his friends and he could do us a special deal and take us to the 400 dirham oasis for only 300 dirham. We figured it was probably worth the extra 5 euros not to have to search around the next day, and we kind of liked the haphazard, non-polished hawking style of these berbers, so we accepted. In celebration, they broke out the drums and some kind of Berber tamborine and started dancing. Well, maybe not in celebration of us but there was much drums and dancing.. Some gringo had brought his bagpipes along (I think he was French so why he even had bagpipes is beyond me) and let me tell you, bagpipes and Berber drums go together like lamb and tuna fish.

Next day we slept in and breakfasted in the sun again. Then, forgetting the cardinal rule of Morocco (that gringos must be accompanied at all times), we tried to set off for town on our own. A guide from the hotel was promptly dispatched and actually proved kind of helpful, if only I suspect to ward off other potential guides. We did have to keep declining his invitation to visit just about every house in the village, but we did eventually agree to go to the cooperative craft shop, where tea was served and carpets were rolled out (though less in welcome as to try to entice us to buy). We managed to avoid the carpets and left with only a few souvenirs.

Three o’clock rolled around…. The camel hour. We met our new camels around the back of our hotel, along with our new guides, a round and rather cheerful Berber called Ali and his mustached accomplice. We hopped on the camels (who were actually dromedaries but that’s far too hard to spell) and were off in camel caravan. For anyone who hasn’t ridden a camel before, they have a kind of rolling gait that is pretty much completely uncomfortable, particularly going over sand dunes.. you can see the problem here. This was the conclusion that we call came to in about five minutes. And we were in trouble you see as we had another two and a half hours to go before we got to the ‘good’ oasis (which we are pretty sure was the same oasis, reached by going the long way around). We did our best to sit back and enjoy the landscape but everyone’s ‘culo’ was getting quite a work out (some more than others, but more on that later….).

We finally arrived at the Oasis and disembarked the camels, not a moment too soon. The oasis lived up to it’s name and reputation. It was a lovely little area surrounded by palm trees and soft sands, with luxurious looking tents set up in a circle around a place for a bonfire, and what looked suspiciously like a bar in one corner.

Just next to this was a slightly less salubrious camp, a couple of palm trees and two or three tents.

And just next to this was a couple of blankets propped up by some sticks. This was to be our camp for the night.

We left the camels to rest and climbed up the nearest dune to watch the sunset, Vito fighting vertigo (the only person I have ever met to get vergito on a sand dune..) and Nato fighting Scarab Beetle De La Muerte. We found a good highish spot and watch the shadows, the dunes, the setting sun and the far off Algerian boarder.
The sun set, we headed down the hill to our tent. As we waited for our tajine, we watched the bonfire and listed to the sounds of the party that was happening at Club Med de Berber down the road. Our host, misinterpreting our interest, assured us that we would also have music after dinner.

Tajine arrived and we ate it Berber style with our hands and bread, before the promised drums and music, a variation on the previous nights, thankfully without the bagpipes. Outside, Nato and Kato watched the starts and satellites making their way across the sky. Seems Nato was waging an internal battle against the Tajine De La Muerte, and losing, as he let out a loud and extravagant ‘torte’, which our new Berber friend kindly attributed to the camelos.

Next morning we were uncharacteristically up to catch the sun and watched the dunes and shadows again, this time in reverse as the sun made it’s way up. We breakfasted sumptuously on Pan, Oranges and Vache, then it was time to get on the camels again…. The camels had other ideas about this however, Nato’s in particular who tossed him off as he was halfway up. Nato seemed to think this was the perfect excuse to avoid another uncomfortable ride, but our Berber friends were having none of this and wresteld the camel to the ground. At least they had by now given up the charade of the other ‘closer’ oasis, so we took the direct route home, cutting the journey in half. Still, the legacy of ‘Il Culo De Camelo’ would haunt us for some weeks to come.