TravBlog: Morocco - Saharan adventures

I'd like to preface this entry by admitting that Morocco is one of the most memorable places that I have been to. The culture shock that we all experienced definitely contributes to that. Once you are past that, however, you begin to realize the uniqueness and enchantment of your experience in this ancient corner of Africa.

Our itinerary consisted of visiting Marrakech for 2 days, an spending the other 2 days driving through the Atlas mountains to the Sahara desert, where we would spend the night and ride the camels back to civilization in the morning.

I'm usually an organization freak and tend to write about events in chronological order, but I want to jump straight to the Sahara portion of our adventure, as it left the biggest imprint on me. Sahara, the biggest dessert on the planet, touches Morocco on the east side of the country, a full 9 hour drive from Marrakech. The drive is not easy, as you have to drive through the mighty Atlas mountains (that are so high in certain places, that they stay covered with snow all year round...being in Africa and all!). This drive, however, is incredibly scenic: you drive through the green valley of the Draa river running through the mountains, through bare red rock formations cracked with stunning canyons, through luscious date plantations with hundreds of thousands of palm trees, through an ancient fortified town of Ait Benhaddou, through the city Ourzazate that is considered the Hollywood of Morocco as it hosts 2 large film studios that film pretty much all the desert scenes you see on TV, and finally, through the desert that starts off rocky and turns into elegant dunes. The funniest thing was seeing flocks of literally hundreds of goats and sheep all over the slopes. I'm guessing those were mountain goats?

We caught a glimpse of a spectacular sunset over the desert while in the car, but weren't prepared for the other beautiful experiences that Sahara was going to offer. We arrived to our camp when it was already pitch black. The plan was to spend the night in a tent in the desert camp that was manned by real Moroccan nomads. That night was definitely a unique experience, as we got to know the nomads around the campfire after dinner. They played traditional instruments and sang for us, and even let us give the instruments a go...this is where I'd like to say that the girls were totally better at it than the boys :P The night sky in Sahara was nothing that I've ever seen, not even at cottages in the middle of nowhere. The stars were bright and plentiful, and one could see the milky way and shooting stars...we then fought over the names of constellations, but gave it a rest when we realized we had no idea what hemisphere night sky we were looking at.

We woke up at 6:30 am and climbed the highest dune to meet the sunrise. I'm not going to try to describe how beautiful it was, as my words won't do it justice, but pictures will! I've included some below. Also, here's a link to all our photos, courtesy of our spectacular personal photographer, Mark Goh. We then got to ride the camels for 2.5 hours trough the desert back to the civilization, i.e. the desert gateway village called Mhamid. I realized that I quite like the camels - they are very calm and almost graceful with their long legs and pretty eyelashes...and contrary to the popular belief they neither smelled nor spat - very polite those camels.

Link to All Sahara Excursion Pictures

Peaks and valleys of Atlas mountains