Like the nomads we to were headed for the Sahara desert but not by walking the long journey south. Once again our day started waiting for transport, this time out of the Dades gorge. We got lucky and hitched a ride with a French couple driving their camper van. One long, hot and dusty bus ride later through the hamada desert landscape of central Morocco we arrived in the sun baked town of Er Rachidia. From here we piled into a grand taxi with 5 other men for the drive south to Merzouga, site of Erg Chebbi the incredible Saharan sand dunes.
There really isn't much of a town here, just a few scruffy shops and to the north and south of town are a few auberges (guesthouses) to stay. The star attraction lies immediately to the east, rising seemingly out of nowhere is erg chebbi. Erg Chebbi is a massive sea of sand stretching into Algeria and with dunes as high as 200 metres. Our auberge was set right at the edge of the sand and from our window it looked as if the dunes were waves closing in on us.
We organized a camping trip into the desert for 1 night, this time there would be no waiting for transportation. We just hopped on our camels and Jordana and I were led by our guide Ali away from civilization for a night in the Sahara. OK wait, let me say that again it just sounds too cool. A night camping in the Sahara. With us aboard the camels we rode up and down the huge dunes as they changed colour from golden yellow to reddish brown in the late afternoon sun. We arrived at our campsite set behind one of the tallest dunes we'd seen yet. We left Ali to setup and headed out to climb the large dune. About a quarter of the way up I commented to Jordana that the clouds looked really dark in the distance. Strange, I was told it hadn't rained in over 5 months and it just doesn't rain here in October. The sky grew darker and I noticed the clouds seemed to be growing like smoke as they neared. "Sandstorm! Jordana lets go back it's a sandstorm." "Oh common it'll just blow over," she responded. Just then the wind grew strong and the sky went from a deep blue to a brown haze and we were lashed with a blanket of sand. We sought shelter in our tent. Being in a sandstorm is a bit surreal but after awhile it feels like sleet except of course it's hot and you get covered in sand.
We spent the rest of the evening having a romantic candlelit dinner in our tent, listening to
traditional Berber music and watching shooting stars in the now amazingly clear and dark Saharan sky. Sleeping was tough in the narrow sleeping bags and Jordana had a real difficult sleep or lack thereof. In the morning we watched the sunrise over the dunes in Algeria. As beautiful as this was the morning felt more like a bad hangover after a night of drinking. Everything was so great the night before but we were now so filthy and hot that we just wanted a shower. Even the camel ride which was fun and exciting yesterday now felt like a bad groin injury.I'm not sure how the nomads will do it but all we could think of was a shower, an A/C bus ride and searching for pizza in our next destination, the medieval city of Fes.
