Moroccan Sahara Tour
We arrived at the meeting point for the tour early, even though we woke up late. There were 15 people in our 2 night 3 day tour of the Sahara: 3 Japanese fashion students who spoke perfect French; 1 brave Japanese female solo travler, Yuko; a Korean guy who just finished a smemester in London; 2 college age Brits, Alex and Sophie, friends only; a married couple from Boston, Zara and Leigh; Bachir and Annic, a male-female friend team from Quebec, and Ursula and Simon, a Slovenian couple the same age as Ryan and I. It was the best tour I´ve been on, in terms of everyone getting along well.
After driving a couple hours, we stopped at a kasbah where there were kids trying to charge us for looking at it and taking photos. Ryan and I were like No, Why? The kid said ‘Money’. Nice, straight, and to the point. At least the kid´s honest. I gave him the rest of my drink, and he seeemd happy with that. We drove on, stopping a few times for photo opportunities and toilet breaks, most of which were Turkish style (squat time!). We stopped for lunch at an expensive restaurant (cause everything but lunch was covered in the orignal price) in Ouarzazette, which is supposed to be a nice town that we didnt get to see, but Ryan and I, Zara and Leigh , Yuko, and the Korean guy went to a cheaper restaurant, where we all ordered the same things on the menu at the previous restaurant, but for half the price.
Back on the bus to sweat our asses off, I had a window seat and had it open, but the air was so hot it felt like I was sticking my head in an oven. The driver, who wasn´t a guide since he only spoke Arabic, propositioned Bachir, who had family in Morocco and spoke perfect Arabic, that for 15 Durham a head he would turn on the aircon. Ryan and I were skeptical, figured that the aircon wouldn´t work, but everyone else was dying and wanted it. I said I´d only do it for 10 Durham, which the driver reluctantly agreed to. We also bargained that we would give the guy 50 Durham a day just in case something went off, or so the guy couldn´t charge us more the second or third days. After a few hours of closed windows and a lack of fresh oxygen, Ryan and I were convinced that the aircon was crap, and that windows open, even though circulating hot air was better. Unfortunately, no one else agreed.
We stopped to look at the finger rocks, which look like blobs of rock. I want to know how they came to be, unfortunately our guide coudln´t tell us…Ryan walked up to a parked car, met some locals, and drank a beer they offered him. Ryan had been wanting a beer since we got to Morocco. The guy supposedly owned a hotel next to the one we were staying at that was having a Spanish band play, and don´t you know, they serve beer! Everyone on the tour was invited. We never found this hotel that was spoken about. Darn.
We pulled up to Hotel Le Vieux Chateau Dades. Our room was complete with a view of a rocky cliff and you could hear a stream. We had a dinner of tomato soup, vegetarian couscous that consisted of eggplant, carrot, and different squashes, and a dessert of honey dew and banana. Everyonewent to bed after dinner, but not after checking out the stars. They were nice and big, but not as close as I hoped they´d seem. Hopefully tomorrow night!
We drove the next morning until we got to some valley where we were met by a guide who spoke English. Took a look at alfalfa fields where Berber (the nomadic aboriginals of Morocco) woman worked. The guy got mad cause we were talking amongst ourselves and offered not to speak since ‘we knew everything’. We all instantly wrote him off as a dick. Then Bachir overheard the working woman start talking shit about our guide ‘He doesn´t know us, he´s not a part of us…’ Bashir started talking to him, our guide was obviously peeved, but the women offered Bashir to try to cut the alfalfa himself, then the girls, and they offered us the cut alfalfa as a souvenir. Bashir said that they were pleased with the interaction. (The women don´t like that the dude makes money off them, and I don´t like anything that exploits humans.)
We were lead to a Berber rug shop where the girls were allowed to brush wool through combs. Then our new guide/merchant gave us green tea with heaps of sugar and showed us rugs hoping someone would buy. We sat in uncomfortable silence as he stared the women down, then tried to guilt us by saying ‘If you can find it in your hearts, then you can find room for it in your homes and in your budgets’. After more uncomfortable silence, he said bitterly, ‘Well I won´t keep you waiting, I´m sure you have more things to see’. I left with a bad taste in my mouth.
We drove to the gorges, beautiful and cool (temperature wise). Walked around, Ryan went in the stream that had cut through the rock to create the gorge, and we headed back where everyone had ordered lunch. Ryan and I had purchased bread, La Vache Qui Rit (The Laughing Cow as its know at home) cheese, and already had some peanut butter. We sat on some rocks and had our own feast, for less than 2 Euros!
We got out of there, headed for the desert, drove through nothing, went off roading, our driver wasn´t on the well marked path (idiot), and we finally got to a hotel. Through the entrance you could see the dunes silently calling our names…They were amazing, spectacular, just…wow. The sand was so golden against the grey sky, just went on, it looked so surreal it could have been the backdrop for a movie set, just painted on a wall.
We got on camels (actually a one humped camel is called a dromedary) that were tied together in two 10 dromedary caravans and I named mine Camilla; Ryan named his Joe. Joe kept on biting Camilla´s ass, that made her mad and me nervous.
I rode a camel a few years ago when I was in Egypt and swore I would never ride one again. But I realized that in Egypt I rode a camel for the picture, and in Morocco was for the experience, and this time the ride was much more comfortable than I remembered.
The experience was AMAZING. We even got rained on-huge raindrops just came over the sand dunes and attacked us. After being in that hot bus it felt good. (And, I figured, only on my trip would it rain in the Sahara…) We could see sandstorms in the distance, creating sand tornadoes, and we could hear the wind carrying the sand over the dunes before we could see it.
We rode over the ridges of dunes while our guide walked barefoot. Dromedaries are so docie, but not skittish. We passed through the real deal biviouacs, saw a woman milking goats, and tents made of blankets half covered in sand. We arrived at our site and our guides told us to climb the dune behind our biviouac. It had to have been 100 feet high, nearly straight up, and impossible to climb. I finally made it to the top and sat. It was goregous. The sun came out to set and played with the lights of the desert. I took heaps of photos, all the while warning everyone else of getting sand in their cameras, since I know so many people who lost theirs due to sand in Australia and New Zealand…
A sandstorm came up and we all ran down the dune, when the sand died down, or so I thought, I took my camera out to take a photo-it opened and it stuck there. SHIT! It made really bad noises and wouldn´t close. I had a few people look at it, but everyones diagnostic was the same as mine : It´s f***ed. I thought I was covered on insurance, and was planning on ‘breaking’ my camera anyways to get a new one near the end of my trip, but learned later that I wasn´t covered. Crap.
While we were gone the Berbers had laid down blankets so we all lied on them, exhausted from our walk up and down the dune. We all chatted, since we were becoming friends now, and once it got dark they brought the food out-massive plates of chicken tangine (stew) that they put on little tables we sat on the ground at. I got my own dish of veg tangine and it. was. good. It needed a bit of salt and it reminded me of my Grandmother´s stewfatto, but delicious. They brought out melon (honeydew? Everyone I´ve met seems to switch what I know as honeydew and canteloupe) and oranges for dessert.
We all lied down, extending our overstuffed bellies, looking at the stars which weren´t too phenomenal yet because of the lights, while the Berbers brought out drums and a sort of cymbally thing and sang and danced. Bachir and Annic got up and started dancing, and after a while Sophie and Ursula joined. Lots of drums, lots of dancing, then they ivited us up to play on the drums, it was cool. The couples started cuddling up and everyone was lying down looking at the stars, listening to the drums, and the beating of our own hearts, sometimes seeming to be the same. I could hear Annic talking to one of the Berbers ‘Young people today are more aware of the world around them, and that´s why theyre more open-minded.’ I thought to myself, this is true, but sometimes, you just have to be. Stop talking and just listen.
One guy started talking to Ryan and I, telling us how tourists sometimes come to his home for a ‘Real Berber’ experience, for a good price, of course. Ryan and I were kind of peeved about him, he wanted to know if we had any questions, No, so he told us we weren´t riding camels, that they were dromedaries. Ryan asked him about the Berber/Muslim religion, and he gave us a respons that didn´t really answer the question. It was clearly a scripted answer. I asked if the Berbers were the first people in Morocco only to get an answer of ‘I think so’. He left us not long after that. We looked at the stars and fell asleep under them.
We were supposed to see the sun rise, but once we got to the spot, the sun was high in the sky. It was still spectacular, being there, seeing nothing but Sahara and plateaus in front of us, dunes surrounding us, the contrast between the bluest blue and almost terra cotta of the dunes was just amazing. We went back to the hotel for a breakfast of crepes, bread, and Turkish coffee.
The driver wanted 50 extra Durham today for aircon, and everyone was adamant in unison: NO WAY. We opened the windows, closed the drapes and it was quite pleasant. We drove the entire way back in one stretch only for pit stops and a lunch break. We got back to Marrakech around 9 and went to the square as a group to spend our last 5 durham on freshly squeezed orange juice, probably the cheapest in the world-3 Durham, or 37 cents US!
After kissing everyone goodbye, European style with a kiss on each cheek, Ryan and I went back to our hotel where Kemal wanted to hear crazy stories in his hot/cold way. Went to bed somewhat early that night, exhausted from our trip.
Tags: Africa
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