Sahara Expedition

Around 10 pm on Tuesday night, we decided we would go to the desert for the weekend. We left for the train to Marrakesh Wednesday morning and got there in time to make our reservation with Sahara Expeditions for the next morning. We had dinner at a nice restaurant overlooking the main square. We stayed in Marrakesh for the night and left early the next morning for the expedition.

In our van, there was an older couple from Holland, their daughter, and her Moroccan husband, a Canadian woman, an English woman, a Canadian man, and his son. The drive to the Sahara was really long, so we stopped periodically and saw some cool things on the way. In the afternoon of the first day of our trip, it started raining in the desert, which almost never happens. The road we were on got washed out, and cars were lined up for about 2 hours while we waited for it to dry up. Some bigger trucks got impatient and tried to cross anyways. One truck actually ended up tipping over the edge in an attempt to cross and was probably totaled. Luckily, the guys in the truck weren’t injured and they just had to wait on top of the truck until they could get help. Eventually, the water slowed down and we could continue the drive. That night, we arrived at a little traditional Berber hotel, where all the power was out because of the rain. We ate a delicious couscous dinner by candlelight.

The next morning, we left early again. At our first stop, we met a tour guide who showed us around a huge garden and then took us to the old Jewish Kasbah. We went into a house, where a man and his sister showed us how the women make carpets by hand. Some of them take up to 4 years to complete, and are absolutely beautiful. We spent a while there, drinking tea and looking at the different carpets. Our next stop was for lunch and to explore for a little while. I’m not sure what the place was called. While we were walking around there, I found some guys who were selling drums. I didn’t have enough money to buy one, but I played with the guys for a little while. I kept walking, and on my way back they asked me again if I wanted to buy one. I told them, I only had 120 dirhams (which is about 17 dollars), but that wasn’t enough. Eventually they let me buy the drum for 120 dirhams, 2 white hanes, and my watch (which was from walgreens).

We finally got to the Saharan desert just in time for the sunset. We rode camels from where the men live, through the dunes, to the middle of the desert, where we slept. Our campsite had big tents made out of blankets and had carpets on the sand floor. For dinner, the Berber men made us some really good tagine and served it to us in one of the tents. At night, there was another storm, and sand was blowing everywhere. It felt like the tent was going to blow over while we were trying to sleep. One of the Berber guys who worked there came into our tent and just sat there for about 20 minutes. He didn’t speak english and it was really awkward, but we eventually communicated that he had to leave. In the morning, I woke up around 4:30 to a rooster crowingm so I knew the sun was starting to rise. I climbed the the top of the highest sand dune near our tent. It was really tiring, especially that early in the morning, but the view was definitely worth it. After sunrise, we rode our camels back to the base and ate breakfast.

We drove for about 2 hours, through a small town called Rissani, where we were dropping 2 of our group members off at a bus station. We saw a sign at the bus station that said Rabat, so we decided to get off and take the bus to Rabat, so we could go directly there instead of going through Marrakesh again. It was 9:30 am, and the bus for Rabat wasn’t going to leave until 5 pm, so we had a lot of time, but our ride had already left. The guy who worked at the bus station was named Khalid, and he showed us around Rissani. It’s a small little town with very little to see, but we walked through the markets for a little while. We ran out of money again, so we needed to go to an ATM so Monica could withdraw some. However, there were only 2 ATMs in the entire city, and both were broken, so Khalid took us on a bus to a city 20 minutes away called Arfoud. After we got money from an ATM there, we got into a large van crammed full of locals, who all seemed very confused by our presence there. We got back to Rissani and went to a restaurant and sat there for a few hours. We went back to the train station and got our drums and bags out of the storage room and decided just to wait there for our bus. There was a group of older Muslim women there who started talking to us in french asking us about how much our drums cost. One of them demanded that we give her one of the drums, and then a man came up demanding that we give him a cigarette, which none of us had. We got uncomfortable and angry that people would be so rude and demanding, so we left and sat at a café until it was time for our bus to leave.

Our bus was crowded and boiling hot, but didn’t have any airconditioning. We immediately regretted our decision to take the bus. After a few hours of sweating, I fell asleep and woke up shivering because I was so cold. The temperature had dropped from about 45 degrees celcius to about 5 degrees. The bus stopped at a little restaurant around 11 pm, and we got some Harrira soup and some tea. The bus finally got back to Rabat at 4 am and we got a taxi back home.