Desert Trip Day 2

We started this day off with a camel ride around the dunes with the most adorable old man as our guide. He draws pictures in the sand to relate whatever he wants to say and he laughs more than I do at even more rediculous things. After the camel ride we drove towards Erg Chigaga with a quick stop at an oasis to help some tourists with car troubles. Our guide knows every person we come across on the route and always stops to chat or jumps out suddenly from the car to hug a trucker passing by who is somehow a family member or best friend. The frequent stops are a relief to Adam who is having a rough ride after eating bad meat the night before and spending the morning quite ill. When we arrive at the base of the dunes the vista is a perfect landscape painting. We spend the rest of the day playing on the dunes until after sunset. Ad and I realize that it is really easy to get lost in the sand and we follow a bright star to make our way back to camp where our guide is already out looking for us. Apparently it is common for people to get lost if they don't make it back before dark.

Desert Trip Day 1

After negotiating a price for a desert trip we headed off to see the Erg Chigaga dunes with a guide and a Spanish guy from Barcelona that spoke very little English. Our guide didn't speak Spanish, so I picked up a temporary translating position for the duration of the trip which was good espanol practice. We started our trip driving through the Draa Valley, a verdant oasis where palm trees and small crops flourish in the midst of a barren, rocky desert. The majority of this day was scenic driving with a stop for lunch in the home of a friend of our guide's.The lunch was a production-First, some mont tea, walnuts, almonds, and olives followed by a large vegetable salad. Next, a lamb tajine with eggs, olives and bread with a fruit tray and more mint tea for dessert.









After lunch our guide took us on a quick tour of the poorest village we visited in Morocco where every person we met had a different plan to get money from the tourists. The population of the village is seven extended families from Mali, about 3,000. The dark Africans in Morocco are the migrant workers from Mali and Senegal that manufacture goods. The child labor we witnessed was not easy to stomach and it was presented as if it were absolutely normal, as if we would be impressed by the work and not notice who was doing it. We were not inclined to support this practice and so we asked our guide to please skip the tourist traps, which for the most part he did from that point on.




That night we stayed in mud huts and played the drums and listened to the southern desert music until the stars came out in full. It was Ad's first time seeing the desert and sand dunes. He took off running and jumping through the soft sand making giant footprints and falling down.