A camel trek in the Sahara is the ultimate Moroccan made-for-tourists experience. Despite that, it’s well worth it.
The day was mostly a driving day. We headed up into the mountains on a windy road, accompanied by “DJ Yo” spinning some tunes. Along the way, we passed the Ziz Gorge, and stopped for the obligatory photos (accompanied by the obligatory touts trying to sell us stuff). A lunch stop in Erfoud had one of the nicest bathrooms I’ve seen so far on this trip – toilet paper and everything! I know, it sounds silly to comment on the bathroom, but you do learn to appreciate the little things while traveling.
We drove through the city of Rissani, which is the main centre in the area, before veering off onto the road to Mergouza. Well, not really a road. More like the vague suggestion of a trail through hard-packed sand. Four-wheel drive vehicles were passing us left and right as our heroic driver navigated the van down the road. It took nearly an hour, and was quite a bumpy ride, but we made it to the base lodge in one piece.
After storing our main packs – and donning our headscarves to keep away the sand and dust – we loaded up our overnight bags and climbed onto camels for the trek out to the desert camp. My camel’s name was Alice (I wasn’t feeling particularly creative, though the fact that the camels were all male makes that name a bit entertaining) and he was pretty well-behaved, though the saddle handles were so far forward that I felt like I was falling out of the saddle half the time.
An hour’s bumpy camel ride later, we made it to the desert camp. Entirely surrounded by spectacular sand dunes, our camp was a set of about six tents, all set up around a common area.
We took advantage of the last hour or so of daylight by setting out to explore. What is there to explore in the Sahara, you may ask? Well, sand, of course. Lots of sand. And some more sand. Four of us decided to climb up the face of the steep sand dune right behind our camp. With closed shoes. And without water. Not too bright. I made it about halfway up before giving up the fight against the one-step-forward-three-steps-back routine. Running down was much more fun than hiking up, mind you. The other three did eventually make it to the top, and I took some photos of them as tiny dots in the distance.
I was expecting dinner to be pretty basic, considering we were in the middle of absolutely nowhere. Instead, the guides brought out a veritable feast, with chicken and beef tagines, fresh bread, and orange slices for dessert. We all ate like kings and queens of the desert. Dinner was followed by drumming and even some attempts at belly dancing. We tried to tell ghost stories, but nobody could think of any so we resorted to children’s fairy tales instead. Don’t ask.
We started off sleeping out under the stars, but after a short while the strong desert breeze kept kicking up sand and it felt like raindrops falling on our faces. After a while, the wind drove us into the tents for the rest of the night for a surprisingly decent night’s sleep.