Sahara Desert, Morocco

We only road out into the desert for about an hour and a half which turns out to be plenty enough time for several reasons: 1. Once you are in the desert, every direction looks the same, no matter how far you go in. 2. Saying that we saddled up for our camel trek would be a bit of an understatement, however the layer of blanket between us and the dromedary hump was better than nothing!


We learned firsthand how important the scarfs are to the Berber people. They keep the wind and sand out of your ears and nose as well as the sun from your brow. They look hot, but it was amazing how much better we felt with the scarves wrapped around our heads! Here is a pic of us and our new German friends that we met along the way.

We were eager to see the sunrise, and were surprised to see the moon still in the morning. We sat patiently on the dunes, watching the sun appear and when it did, it completely changed the color and composure of the dunes.

The mornings were nice enough to head out on runs to explore the dunes.

While exploring we found a little oasis that was growing all sorts of vegetables and trees. It was exactly what you would expect from an oasis in the desert. It turns out that the locals have a really good sense of how to manage water, and have an underground canal that brings water to the desert from some distant aquifers.

We slept soundly every night with the sand dunes immediately outside our window and were a bit sad to leave our desert oasis. Hassan (hotel owner) whisked us away -- literally driving about 140 kph (for no reason other than he could) in his 4x4 to catch our bus out of town.