Day 32 - Sahara

Local boy

Pottery demonstration

Giving the donkey some help

Camel

Camel driver

Our camp in the Sahara

Very tired!  Not a great way to start our adventure in the Sahara desert but not much I can do about it except drink coffee.

On the road, stopping at an African village for a guided tour.  The difference between the people and buildings here in southern Morocco is noticable.  People have darker skin, the landscape is a lot dryer and harsher, and many buildings and villages are made of mud brick.

A local guide showed us around his village - Tamegroute.  The villagers are renovating the buildings with a lot of energy and enthusiasm.  The main site he took us to is the old library - storing books in glass shelves in ancient text on mathematics, algebra, law etc in addition to Quarans dating from the 13th century and written on gazelle hide.

Next stop was the collective pottery studio - pottery made and sold with proceeds going to the whole community.  Prices were reasonable and it was a good cause so I bought 4 bread and butter sized plates in the four distinctive colours - red, yellow, green and blue.  They will look great hanging on the wall.

After a couple of hours in the mini-van we arrived at our meeting point for camels and 4WD's.  I HATE riding on camels - I have done it twice before and always suffer afterwards.  This time was no exception - we only rode on them for an hour but 2 days later I am still in pain!  The 4WD's took our day packs and met us, so we could then continue on to the Sahara desert. 

The desert didn't look like I expected, there were periods of time we were driving on flat tracks, but most of this was on hand-sized rock so it was an incredibly bumpy ride (thank goodness I wore the sports bra!!)  I sat up the back of the 4WD, there was no air conditioning so it was a bone jarring and dirty ride but also a lot of fun.  We looked out for wild camels and donkeys along the way.

Camp in the Sahara for the night was next to huge sand dunes.  We arrive at around 6pm so got up to the top of a large sand dune to watch the sunset whilst our dinner was cooked for us.  We are sleeping in camel hair tents, eating vegetable tagine, harissa (soup) and beef bbq.  All good.  Sunset was a let down and we were all so tired after the long tough drive we all went to bed early - 4 of us sleeping the night under the stars (this is always special for me, have done so before in the desert in India and Jordan).  It would've been good to enjoy a sheesha before bed (water pipe with apple tobacco) but unfortunately it was broken.