A camel, a tent, and a blanket.

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Trip Start Feb 17, 2010 Previous
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  Merzouga, Morocco
Wednesday, February 24, 2010

We woke up to a beautiful, cold sunrise. The breakfast was nice but the coffee was fantastic!  We crossed the river again and met Hamid for our drive to Merzouga and the desert.  We saw some beautiful scenery (still) during our drive and continued to be totally in love with the landscape.  Eventually the views changed and the mountains came closer and we were in  Todra Gorge.  I can only describe it as a bit like being in the Grand Canyon if it were as wide as a road and you were on the bottom.  Amazing.  Hamid dropped us off on one side and we walked through the narrowest part to really see it up close.  I have to mention here that the people we have met while in Morocco have been so friendly.  It's easy to believe that everyone who is friendly and wants to talk to you in fact wants something from you.  Our walk through the gorge was a great example of what the people here are like.  As we started in, a young man started talking to us – very excited to speak English.  He told us about some Spanish climbers who climbed the walls of the gorge and pointed out the carabineers  still imbedded in the rock.  He also pointed out that the river running through the gorge was so clean since it came straight from the mountains.  He was just walking in to fill his water bottle with the clean mountain river and when he got to the point where he could fill it, he bid us good-bye.  A few minutes later, one of the men working on the road struck up a conversation. After a short chat, he offered to let us come sleep at his house and help take care of his kids!  These people are just so friendly.  My few words of Arabic that I’ve learned have brought on some big smiles.  It’s great!

After Todra, we got to Erfoud and met up with Tata (Abdelkarim is his name – I don’t know how he got the nickname "Tata").  He brought us to Risani where we had Medfuna – a Berber pizza.  It was delicious!!!  We left there in a bit of a hurry and headed for our camels!

The camels were waiting for us in Merzouga but there was apparently a party of 5 that hadn’t shown up yet, so we left with a young man who didn’t say much, while the head “camel driver” waited for them.  Getting on a camel is easy, it’s the part where they stand up that is a bit tricky.  We got moving and boy oh boy those camel saddles are not exactly comfortable!  It was a really rocky ride and I felt bad for Roger. He was definitely nervous and barely took pictures for the first half hour or so (that should describe how nervous he was).  Luckily we had a little camera so I started snapping! The scenery was spectacular – pinkish tones on the dunes, our camel shadows falling on the next dune over.  Really it was just like you read about.  As if that wasn’t enough,  I turned around and there was a rainbow.  Sent me off to enjoy my birthday in the desert with style. 

 We rode for a little over an hour and then we “parked” the camels and hiked up a HUGE sand dune to watch the sunset.  Stunning! That was some hard work but coming down was actually pretty tough too.  Another half hour on the camels and we met up with the other group.  Rather, we heard them and then sadly realized that they were coming with us.  More on that later.  We arrived at the “camp” after dark so settling into the tents was a bit tricky.  We had a lovely meal and then we headed off into the dunes to check out the stars (and look for shooting ones, but no luck).  Back in the camp, we went to bed around 10:45 since we had a 6:00 wakeup the next morning in order to be awake for the sunrise.  At 11:30 I had to go ask the other group to be quiet.  The mom was chatting with her sister and the young boy – who NEVER stopped talking the entire night, unless his mother was talking non-stop – was still talking just as loud as could be.  Roger and I didn’t want to hear any more about his iPod shuffle, what kind of Apple computer he wanted to get, or about how he thought the apple (the fruit) got its name.  They got quiet after I scolded them, and we finally got to sleep in the quietly peaceful desert.

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preparing tea   Comments!

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The dune we climbed and watched the sunset   Comments!

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