Spring Desert Part One: The Desert

All dressed up like a berber tourist and ready to explore the Sahara desert. 

Spring break started by heading down to Fez right away Friday afternoon once classes were done where we spent the night and then headed south again with a group of 13, including myself towards the desert.  After a long ride in some vans, that were at least pretty comfortable, especially when compared to grand taxi standards, we stopped in Rissani where we had a late lunch of Tagine and then switched to more desert appropriate vehicles and drove further out into the desert to a compound in the Merzouga area where we spent the first night right on the edges of the sand dunes about 15/20km from the Algerian border.  The next day after a tour of some nearby oasis we headed out into the sand dunes, riding camels.  Definitely an awesome experience, though the camel riding got kind of sore after a while.  After an hour or so of riding we arrived at our destination, a bunch of Berber tents nestled amongst the sand dunes waiting for us.  It was kind of weird thinking that if anything was to happen to us, the fastest way out of there would have started out with an hour-long ride on a camel.  Kind of made me feel like we’d jumped back in time a couple of hundred years or so.  We had a supper of tagine and then wandered to the tops of some nearby sand dunes to enjoy the stars. 

Where we spent the night on top of the sand dune.

A couple people had brought some bottles of wine, so we enjoyed the stars with some of that along with cheese that got a bit sandy as it got passed around.  We were all going to sleep in Berber tents, but me and another guy decided it would be way cooler to spend out night in the Sahara desert out on top of a sand dune under the start so we dragged some mats, and blankets up there along with our sleeping bags and went to sleep with nothing but the wind to keep us company under a sky full of stars and the occasional satellite.  I don’t think I’ve ever been somewhere where there have been so many stars or where it’s been so quite.  It was pretty weird, too, knowing that if anything happened to any of us, the fastest way out of there would start with an hour on top of a camel.  Felt almost like we had jumped back in time a couple of hundred years, except for having a cell phone in my pocket that worked better than it does at my house in Kamloops. 

On our way back from our night in the desert watching the sun rise.

Just after the sun rose above the dunes. 

The next morning we packed up and were riding back through the dunes to our compound by the time the sun rose out of the Algerian desert.  Back at the compound we enjoyed a breakfast and showers for those who wanted it.  I headed back out to the dunes with a couple others to get some last minute pictures jumping off of dunes and doing cartwheels down them, ensuring that everything we were wearing was full of the fine reddish sand of the desert by the time we were done.  Loaded back into the 4x4 vehicles we retraced our steps back to Rissani where we switched to the vans and made our trip back north again full of memories of the desert and loaded down with bottles of sand as souvenirs to take home with us.