Morocco Part 2
The Sahara Desert
““See I’ve been through the desert on a horse with no name…” ”
The Desert and The Sickness
We embarked on the next part of our Moroccan adventure to the Sahara desert. We used the company Rough Tours to coordinate our trip from Fez – to – Sahara desert – to – Marrakesh. I highly recommend this company if you want to see a lot of Morocco and don’t want to be a part of a big tour group. It’s definitely a little more pricey – about $400 per person but was well-worth it for two American girls who were traveling clear across a foreign country on their own.
We met our new guide named Mohamed who led us to a super nice, well-equipped Mitsubishi 4-Runner-type vehicle and we were off. It felt great to be in a nice car and see all the tour buses lumbering behind us. Hiring private guides is definitely the way to go!
One of the benefits of hiring a private guide is they can make stops whenever and they also can show you a few fun things along the way.
We stopped in a beautiful town along the way called Ifrane – which is where the King of Morocco stays for summer holidays. It’s at a higher elevation with lots of greenery, parks and Chalet-like homes. It has been called the ‘Switzerland of Morocco.’ Really not what you would picture when you picture Morocco. They have an ape preserve that we got to visit. These apes are High Atlas apes and they roam freely in a park and will come right up to you.
About two hours into our 8 hour car ride to the Sahara, both Liz and I started to feel pretty sick. We had multiple bathroom stops and to use slightly raised holes in the ground. We determined it must have been food poisoning from Cafe Fez the night before. And this is yet another reason why having a private guide was so useful! Frequent bathroom stops whenever needed.
*In other news our guide Mohamed is very pleasant and nice but has no shame about picking his nose at anytime.*
The scenery went from beautiful green and lush gardens of Ifrane to rolling sand dunes. Tired, and having nothing left in my body to come up or go out, we sat down an rested prior to leaving on our camels to the desert. Our guides gave us a special herbal teat to help our stomachs and it actually did seem to help enough that I felt ready to ride a camel for a couple of hours into the Sahara desert to a remote camp.
Also Imodium helps too…
You might ask yourself if it was still a good idea to go into the middle of the Sahara desert to camp if we had both been so sick? The answer is, “no, probably not” but we had came all this way and weren’t about to let some traveler’s sickness prevent us from this experience.
Our Sahara camel guide’s name was Abraham, and he said that our camels did not have names so we named them Isaac and Jacob which felt Biblically fitting.
The Sahara desert is exactly what it looks like in the movies. Endless waves of sand that seem to stretch on to infinity until they meet blue sky. This sand was the finest sand I’ve ever felt – it was so soft. The way that the wind moves over the sand looks just like how the wind moves over the waves of an ocean. It was amazing. We were on camels and trekking through the desert.
As we went deeper and deeper in the Sahara, the wind really started to pick up and pretty soon I couldn’t even open my eyes because of all the sand flying around. Plus I was starting to feel feverish and achy again. By the time we got into our little camp – which was really beautiful – rows of tents back-lit against the night sky – all I wanted to do was crawl into bed and rest my aching bones. I went immediately to bed and passed out, only to wake up 20 minutes later feeling suffocated because I realized that our nice tents – complete with electricity and beds, are very highly insulated (for when it gets really cold) with no way to let heat escape.
I took my blanket outside of our tent and laid down in the sand which was amazingly comfortable which a light warm breeze blowing. The stars were coming out and the guides had started a fire where they were drumming and singing nearby. Very peaceful… Until 3 hours later I woke up again to the wind whipping at my back and blowing sand all over me so it was back into the suffocating tent.
After a not-so-restful night in the tent in the middle of the Sahara desert, I was awoken at 5 am by our guide to see the sunrise. I felt feverish and achy all all over but I would be darned if I didn’t see a freakin’ Sahara sunrise! So Liz and I hauled ourselves out of bed and up a giant sand dune to watch a sunrise that looked other-worldly. In fact, it looked exactly how I would imagine sunrise over Tatooine – Luke Skywalker’s home planet – which is also in the desert (except in this world we only had 1 sun).
Ok one more Star Wars reference. Did you know that camels sound exactly like Tauntaun – the animal that Luke Skywalker kills and hides in it’s belly for warmth in Episode V?
The moral of the story is that I think either George Lucas or somebody on sound tech of Star Wars spent time in the Sahara desert because there are a lot of salutes to it in those movies!
Other thoughts: If any of you find yourselves on a trip on a camel to the Sahara desert, I highly recommend you consider bringing your snowboard/ski goggles. The wind there is no joke and sand gets everywhere including your eyes. On our way back the wind was not blowing at us, thank God, but on the way there it would have been nice.
More from the day: Ok I made it out of bed and watched the sunrise, but still felt feverish. Did I a) take a car back to our hotel outside the sand dunes? B) go sand boarding? Or c) go sandboarding and take the camel back AND have a dance party on the camel?
You guys know the answer is C.
Sandboarding in the Sahara
From somewhere of the depths of my being, I found the strength to sandboard (not scary! Even if you don’t snowboard!) a couple of times. Ok two times – I’m not a miracle and I did feel sick.
And then, like I said, since the wind was not in my face, the ride on the camel was much better. And Liz had made a an awesome Sahara desert Playlist consisting mainly of songs from Sex and the City 2 (where they go to Morocco) so we danced around as best we could while riding our camels. It was a beautiful morning and the sand dunes against the blue sky were mesmerizing.
Once we got back into camp around 7:30 am (how was it only 7:30 and we had already done so much?!) We showered drank some more mint tea and headed out to our next destination.
On our drive we watched the scenery change from straight-up desert sand dunes to a lush oasis valley gorge where we stopped to take pictures and put our feet in the cold mountain stream.
But I was so glad when we reached our hotel in the Dades Valley around 3pm that day. By then my fever seemed to have come back full force and I hadn’t eaten anything in 24 hours. Hotel Xaluca, looked like a Game of Thrones fortress and was beautiful on the inside – reminiscent of maybe what you would find at a fancy hotel in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Our room had gorgeous views of the Dades Valley which is full of date palms and quaint-looking villages. We also had a beautiful pool with jacuzzi but I did not care about any of this at the time. I felt so sick, I just wanted to sleep. So I did. For 4.5 hours.
When I woke up I felt a million and one times better. No aches! No chills! No fever AND…. I felt a little hungry! Woohoo! Liz and I made our way to the dining room where I ate a little bit of couscous and potatoes. My stomach seemed to be up for digesting that.
All in all it was not an ideal trip to the desert, but also I’m so glad that I pushed myself to experience everything. Our bodies are stronger than we give them credit!
Tune in next week for the final installment of my Morocco trip – seeing some spots where Game of Thrones was filmed and Marrakech.