Road trip to the Sahara!
Per usual, Very Adventure! is very behind. Recently I’ve been obliged to spend more time writing cover letters than travel updates, but before I squeeze myself back into the personality-lite “professionalism” box, there is yet blogging to do! I’d be remiss not to include a post about our desert-camping dune-climbing camel-riding Saharan experience.
The Sahara Desert (fun fact: “sahara” means desert, so “Sahara Desert” is like saying Desert Desert!) begins at the eastern edge of Morocco, so we rented a car to drive the ~9 hours from Marrakech to almost-Algeria. On the way, we stopped to spend a night in Ait Benhaddou, a thousand-year-old old fortified town (ksar) and castle (kasbah), which was the filming location for Gladiator and Game of Thrones (among many other movies).
After a long drive through clouds of dust and almost-desert, we arrived around 5:30pm in Merzouga, the biggest town along the edge of the dunes. We parked our car at a hotel and met our Bedouin camp hosts, who drove us in a 4x4 up and over the dunes, blasting Shakira (apparently Morocco is very into Shakira) to the camp.
If you’re considering doing this, I have to warn you that choosing one of the MANY camps is very confusing — they all use the same photos on the booking apps, but vary wildly in price. (I assume this is because everyone knows everyone and just shared photos at one point?) Since they all had good reviews, we opted for a cheap one ($10 per night) and were not at all disappointed!
The first night kicked off strong with dinner followed by a bonfire and Bedouin drum circle/dance party. Now this is obviously “for the tourists,” as many nice things are. A lot of travelers like to hate on “touristic” things, but we often joke “Hi, I’m here for your tourism!” Of course sometimes it’s super cool to get invited to someone’s home for a meal and chat through google translate about local politics, but when you’ve been traveling for as long as we have, you also really appreciate tourist infrastructure (transportation! guest houses! restaurants!). Yes please show me your beautiful sites and showcase your culture! Also, tourism economies are real economies and I’m happy to support them! And for something like desert camping, actual Bedouin camps in the Sahara probably don’t have four-poster beds with standard mattresses and a tent specifically for toilets and showers? But I like those things! (According to our hosts, due to “the drought”—aka increasingly frequent and severe droughts over recent decades due to climate change—nomad life has become too hard and most Moroccan Bedouins are now living in towns like Merzouga.)
The next morning we woke up for a sunrise (goddamnit always sunrises) camel ride through the dunes. We’ve been offered many camel rides over the course of this year (oh btw happy 1-year traveliversary to us!), and had declined them all. But in the Sahara at a Bedouin camp? Take my money ($15)! The camels (which are of the dromedary variety—or “Arabian camel”—as they have one hump unlike your standard-issue two-humped camel) were calm and the ride was easy, so we’ll count that as a win!
We suffered through the midday heat playing cards in the shade, and in the late afternoon ventured back out into the dunes. We took approximately one bajillion photos — how are they all so cool?! The dune field was extensive and just otherworldly amazing. I get why so many movies and sci-fi and books include sand dune deserts — they really are the most exotically beautiful.
We also tried our hands (feet?) at sand boarding, which is quite literally taking a snowboard up a sand dune and riding it down. The downside—at least for the boards available at our camp—was that there was no way to attach your feet, making carving (or steering at all) difficult to impossible. Also, sand is not particularly soft to crash on at the bottom of a dune, where wind and gravity packs it in pretty hard. After a few good go’s—and subsequent crashes—each, we decided we had sufficiently experienced the experience and the injury risk wasn’t worth the thrill (is this what maturity feels like?).
We spent another night in the tent (most people just do one, but I think two nights is the right amount of time), before 4x4’ing back to our car and driving all the way back to Marrakech.
What am I reading?
Just finished: Infinite Country (Patricia Engel)
Currently reading: Caliban’s War (James S.A. Corey)
Up next: The Wolf Den (Elodie Harper)