So I'm apparently in trouble with the blogging gods, since I definitely wrote and thought I posted an entire entry about being in the Sahara desert… but that's nowhere to be found. Apologies to those of you who were on the edge of your seats waiting for that one (you know you were).
In any case, we left off at the end of our long day in the Medina of Fes. This long day was followed by another several hours of bus travel south, to the Sahara desert. We stopped for lunch at a place they kept calling the Oasis Café for lunch of the standard fare–veggies, chicken & couscous. With clementines for dessert.
Oh yeah, and my sorority sister Charlotte and I found donkeys.
After lunch, kids from nearby (I assume) basically stalked us back to the buses, trying to sell us camels they wove out of palm leaves. The kids were cute–but there's no way I would get a camel made out of plants home in one piece. No way.
This woman was also doing laundry outside the complex where we ate lunch.
So we got back on the bus, and finally arrived in Erfoud, where we were leaving the buses for the next two days, and piled into jeeps to take us out to the camp in the desert. Also, these guys drive like maniacs. It was awesome.
We stopped for a few minutes (when you're in Morocco, "ten minutes" usually means at least a half hour) to look at the stars. You could see the Milky Way, shooting stars, satellites… the works. It was beautiful. I wish my camera was cool enough to pick up the stars, but y'all will just have to deal with my mediocre writing skills.
Then we finally made it to the camp, which consisted of one large white tent big enough to house dinner tables to seat 150+ students, and the jaimas where we kept our things and slept. Basically, it was just rows of beds for dayyyys.
The evening consisted of snacks of mint tea (yum!) and peanuts (double yum!), going to explore the dunes and ending up having conversations with the guys from the local village who hang out at the camp, and a dinner of, you guessed it, the standard fare.
After several long days on the bus with the ISA Madrid students, it was nice to have the chance to split up and get some breathing room. Especially given that the Salamanca group has noticed we care a lot more about learning about other cultures and languages, while the Madrid group has a higher percentage of the kids who are abroad just for fun. When choosing what language to watch a movie in, the phrase "Can we get some 'MERICAN up in here?" was used… and someone asked if there was going to be wifi in the desert. Not anyone's finest hour. But it means I'm a lot closer with the kids from Salamanca, because nothing bonds people like gossip, right?
In any case, after all of that, we were pretty beat, and turned in so we could get up the next morning at 5:30 for the sunrise.
The next morning, dark and early (if it was bright, we would've overslept), my friend Britt and I hiked out to a dune about 15 minutes from camp with one of the two-dozen Berber guides who were outside the camp. We watched the beautiful sunrise, saw the ocean of sand around us change colors, talked to our guide a little bit, and then had to extricate ourselves at the end of it when he tried to sell us some polished fossils. No such thing as a free lunch, especially not in Morocco.
Breakfast was pretty good–hard-boiled eggs, naan with jam (my new favorite thing ever), bread, and peach yogurt. And orange juice.
And then it was camel-riding time!! Which is a bit of a process. What happens is, you get on the camel when it's sitting down. And then the camel gets up, with its back legs first, then its front legs. If you're lucky, you get a quick one who doesn't take long in the transition. If you're not, you get to sit there for several awesome seconds while seated on something that's at what feels like a 60º angle. Iago (that's what I named my camel) was not what I would call the fastest of the bunch. And my hand slipped off one time when he went to sit down, so I almost face-planted in the sand. That's a scar with a good story though, I guess. Luckily though, no scars! Not even a sunburn, despite my pasty-white skin. Thanks for the SPF 45, Mommy!
We rode on the camels out to the "giant dune" as it was being called. Some of the kids from the village followed us there (camels are slow), playing soccer the whole way. When we got there, we gave the camels a rest and climbed the dune ourselves to see the view. On one side, you could see out to the border of Algeria & Morocco. On another, you could see the local villages. On all sides, you could see sand, lots and lots of sand. The kids from the village who came up kept running and doing flips off the ridge side of the dune–crazy little children. They were pretty good too!
After all this, we rode the camels back to the village, I bought another giant bottle of water and drank 2/3 of it within a half hour… I may have been slightly dehydrated. Even Colorado girl conditioning can't quite stand up to the Sahara. We visited another shop (even though most of us were out of money or forgot to bring it…) and then walked home across the hot, hot desert. It was at this point that the phrase, "F– off flies, I have enough problems!" was coined by one of my fellow students who was having a particularly rough go of it (ripped off by vendors, sick from food or something, lost his iPod in the desert after watching the sunrise…). So that became our motto when we were being whiny. We're classy like that.
But once we got back to camp and got some lunch in us, we were much less whiny. And some of the ladies from the village came to do henna! The girl who did mine was named Fatima and she's 14 years old. She speaks English well enough to get customers and have a conversation, and her 6-year-old brother was sitting next to her and started counting to 10 in English while I was sitting there. They were adorable, the pair of them.
The rest of the afternoon was a lot of the girls sitting around chatting while our henna dried, and the boys playing cards. If you ever visit the desert, cards are a necessity. That's my advice.
We ventured out to the dunes and had more conversations with local Berbers while watching the sunset–including one where they were surprised that my 20-year-old friends and I weren't married off yet. Reasons I do not want to live in Morocco. If a woman hits 28 or 30 and is still single, she's pretty much doomed to be the African version of a cat lady.
After dinner, I went out with two of my friends to look at the stars again. We saw about 3 shooting stars within two minutes, and then got to watch the moon rise over the desert. Nothing like it.
The next morning, we got back on the bus, and drove to Meknes, where I took one of the best showers of my life. Even though the tub was a weird color and there was no water pressure. Not having sand in your hair or pants makes everything better. Dinner included french fries and chicken–a welcome change of meal!
The next morning, we left the hotel at 10 AM… and arrived in Madrid at about 6 AM, just in time to hear the official election results from the USA. And then we got on another bus to Salamanca, and I got home at 11 AM. Longest day of my life. After another hot shower and a coffee, I managed to make it through my classes. I learned how to say "Milky Way" in Spanish from talking to one of my classmates about the stars in the desert (Vía Láctea). And then I went home and slept for about 12 hours. Exhausted, but it was such a crazy experience, I'm glad I went.
