After our High Atlas Mountains trekking, we had one night back in Marrakech and then we went on a tour of the Moroccon Sahara desert. The first day of our tour was a visit to some small towns and a visit to the Todra Gorge. The gorge had beautiful rock walls and is a mecca for climbers. But the meat of our tour started on the second day. Our van dropped us off at the Sahara desert near Erg Chebbi (roughly 300 miles east of Marrakech).
We rode camels to the Erg Chebbi Desert luxury camp. This took about an hour and twenty minutes and covered 2.6 miles across the desert. There were miles of beautiful sand dunes. Camel riding was surprisingly easy and fun. All of our camels were connected together. My only worry is that the camel immediately behind me kept coming up on my left side. It was hacking the whole time. Camels are known to spit and this camel sounded like it was getting ready to hawk up the biggest lugie of all time onto me. Fortunately, it never did. Meanwhile, the camel in front of me that Kate was riding on, started pooping. When they poop, they flip their tails up and try and fling it backwards. The camel I was riding on realized this and immediately stepped to the side. But the poop barely missed me.
We arrived at our camp and our tents were very nice. We tried to do some sandboarding but the dunes near us were not very steep and we didn’t have much luck. But… speaking of luck, that night during dinner a sandstorm blew in. It was magnificent. I have always dreamed of being in a sandstorm. The wind was blowing really hard and it was difficult to stand up. I had a buff over my nose and my swim goggles over my eyes. Visibility was about 200′.
Our tent had a lot of dust in it that night and we weren’t able to sleep very well.
The next day, we were treated to spectacular desert sunrises. We were supposed to ride back to the main road. My butt was sore from camel riding, so I elected to ride back in the truck. Kate road back on a camel. After getting back to our van, they drove us to Fes. Fes had some neat Suks to walk through, but overall we preferred Marrakech.
