Midnight at the Oasis, Put your Camel to Bed.......Rock the Kasbah...Internet dates, palm dates and Camel dates, and there are no bad dates in the desert...

The prologue....
....we went to the desert (without a horse with no name) on dromedaries called Ali and Hassan....

                          Morocco...Part 3.....The Sahara....
...... a place of overwhelming beauty at every turn and much much more...

"Berber whiskey makes you frisky, but it isn't risky"
...ancient Moroccan proverb...told to us by our taxi driver...it actually refers to Moroccan tea...ha

We find ourselves on a sand dune in the Sahara, under a November supermoon, a scant 15 km from the Algerian border...

     OK.... let's rewind this story and start back        several days earlier......

Paul Bowles; author of The Sheltering Sky and more...writes the following about the desert...

..."The coming of day promises a change; It's only when the day had fully arrived that the watcher suspects it is the same day returned once again - the same day he has been living for a long time over and over".....PB

His words strike a chord with us....a timeless cycle, sand, sunrise, sunset...the wind shaping, shifting dunes...yet, the rhythms of the desert continue on..

To us the desert is like a lover we all desire... intimate and close.....it gets under your clothes, lingers on your skin, slips into your bed, runs its fine, wind-driven fingers through your hair and caresses places only a lover knows....

...it is a place of silence and solitude...a place where dreams and mirages merge; where beauty lies in the sameness, the wind, the quiet....it is unhurried and reflective...it is to sit silent, watching the dunes in a Sahara sunset capture shadows and spirits like a Berber storyteller gathers tales... it is a place for footsteps to vanish, to return to the grains to be cleaned once more...where the vast emptiness speaks to our hearts and grabs our soul....it....is.....to breathe...

We meet Mohamed on an internet camel site... OK... actually, it was a blog that mentioned his outfit.... Camel-Trekking Experiences...he sounded good online....and, as several other Trekking outfits hadn't bothered to respond - we were left with little choice.... upon reflection...it was a great choice....

Hassan (our driver) Mohamed (Camel Trekking Excursions)

After several back and forth emails between us, sight unseen, we have a Camel Date with Mohamed in Merzouga.

Mohamed and his driver come to pick us up 2 hours north in the town of Errachidia. From here we travel with an SUV south through spectacular gorges, villages and palmeraies.

A 'donkey parking lot' in the middle of town...vendors coming to town with their donkeys laden with their wares need a place to secure their animals.  Ropes staked to the ground prevent these beasts of burden from wandering .

Later that day, with the sun setting over the desert dunes, we are now in the wild, empty, vibrant, silent Sahara... alone, spending 2 nights in the desert at Mohamed's camp with our camels.

Trust got us here. To this point. In Time. In Morocco. With Mohamed. Trust gets us everywhere we want to go when we travel. No different in Morocco.

We see how that the little voice of fear, pounded into us by the everyday noise and naysayers, erodes and poisons one's dreams and journeys. It paralyzes all of us, yearning to live a life. We ignore the doubters and are here, under the deep blue sky and golden sands of the Sahara...it seems to be at the ends of the earth near the Algerian border.

We ride the camels. Over 3 days, we spend 6 hours on these quiet ships of the desert. Just us in the Camp, along with Mohamed and several others to watch over us, feed us and guide us among the dunes.

The hammada or stony dessert

We visit an oasis, eat Berber pizza made fresh in a simple ground oven, wander through an old, abandoned Kasbah and climb a sand dune to watch the setting sun.

The oasis full with solar panels, water lines being pumped from the well and woven mats to walk on in the dining area.

The pizza, stuffed with ground beef and veggies is covered by this tiny drum that has the wooden fire lit on it.  At about 15 minutes the pizza is flipped and the cooking continues...

The result...a most delicious pizza eaten in our own little  Berber dining room! Even the goat Herder enjoyed it.

An abandoned Berber village from years gone past.

Our camel guide watching the sunset in his traditional jellaba coat

This is me in my jellaba coat watching the sunset.

For 3 days, we sleep in and wear the same clothes. We do have a western-style toilet, a 6 person tent to ourselves and a wash basin. It is cool at night, so we layer up on our clothing and pile on the extra wool blankets. So cozy as the wind whistles through our woven door flap.

The young man that guides our camels walks for hours over dunes and on the hard packed, flat desert.

He has a few Arabic camel commands and, it seems, only a few English words..."Good"....either inflected with a ? or ! and, "hold on" as we descend a dune while holding on tightly.

We spend hours together, just the 3 of us (hum that tune) tethered by rope and the stillness, alone with our thoughts, as our able footed friends... (Ali and Hassan as the camels were named)...plod along.

Our last morning starts early.... Yvonne goes to capture the blossoming sunrise. We eat a simple breakfast of bread, jam, cheese and tea. We pack, say our goodbyes and shokrans. Then, we climb onto our trusty rides for one last hour, rise up awkwardly on their backs, and head back to Merzouga.

Our time in the Erg Chebbi is over. We leave with an appreciation of the ancient camel trains that traded these routes.... bringing spice and cloth....sharing knowledge and passing history...

We leave you with another quote from P Bowles....

"The only thing that makes life worth living is the possibility of experiencing now and then a perfect moment. And, perhaps, even more than that, it's having the ability to recall such moments in their totality, to contemplate them like jewels"

......our moment in the Sahara was just such perfection....to remember....will be to cherish..

                              Next up....... Morocco... Part 4...
              ........Taking the road less traveled..
          ..Skirting the Algerian border....