A Weekend in the Sahara
Since it's now early Monday afternoon, and I'm in a semi-lucid state after one of the craziest and busiest weekends of my life, I thought I'd try to reconstitute some of what happened this past weekend on our whirlwind trip to Erfoud and the Sahara Desert...
The trip started out on Friday night with a 10pm overnight CTM Bus to Errichidia. Seventeen upbeat Westerners and Moroccans (including our recently arrived, and understandably bewildered Dutch trainee, Bernadette) slogged our way through the bus lines to appropriate the back few rows of the bus. The trip started off un-eventfully - given the fact that I can't fall asleep in moving vehicles, I witnessed a lot of hair-rising and beautiful sights on our 8-hour overnight journey. The initial part of the trip took us past Meknes and Fes, before we entered the passes through the Atlas mountains. At this point, the ride became increasingly like a rollercoaster, and less and less like a jaunt through the Moroccan countryside. Adding to the ride was the beautiful Moroccan sunrise, which illuminated the mountain passes (a little bit too much for my tastes, sometimes you just shouldn't look down).
After a sleepless night, we arrived in Errichidia early in the morning and took a grand taxi (an old, 1970s-era Mercedes - used as a shared-ride taxi for 6 passengers) on an hour trip to the desert town of Erfoud. The population of 7000 was composed almost exclusively of Berbers - the "more" indigenous people of Morocco - in comparison to the Arabs. Tensions were clear, when I got out of the Taxi and was beset by two young men hawking local necklaces, I responded with a perfunctory but clear "La" - Dirija for "No." The older of the two guys looked at me blankly, and responded in English: "what is this word, 'la?' I don't understand this word." After briefly flailing to explain myself in French, he responded further: "'La' is not our language, I don't speak it."
Basically, there are 3 popular Berber dialects in Morocco, and while they're almost unheard in the coastal cities, they enjoy a strong ethnic role in Berber Morocco. The reason that this man was able to respond to me in English - which was somewhat startling - is that, as was explained by Moroccans to me, ethnic Berbers resent Arabic being imposed upon them, and also resent French. It's not uncommon to find Berbers who know their local dialect and another language such as English instead of Dirija or French.
Anyways, once we decamped in Erfoud, we quickly found refuge from the absolutely stifling dry heat in our local friend's apartment. After laying down for a few hours, we ate a lunch of couscous and drank some local "fresh" sour milk before heading off to our three waiting Land Rovers. From there, we took the land rovers (with our professional guides behind the wheel, unfortunately) on the hour trip to base camp by the Sahara. Forgoing traditional roads, we made the arid and flat land our highway, rolling along at suicidal speeds through some incredibly rough and varied terrain. As a side note, seeing a Land Rover cutting up a swath of dust in its wake as it travels over the open land with the dunes of the Sahara in the background is one of those images I'll have with me forever.
At base camp, we unpacked our things and gathered a few provisions for our night in the Desert. Taking the guides' advice, I packed lightly - two large bottles of water, sunglass clips, and this foreign-legion-style hat that I'd picked up at REI back in Minnesota. From there, it was onto the Camels for a two-hour ride straight into the Sahara.
I'd like to take a moment to express my feelings on the subject of camels. Firstly, up close and personal, Camels are really fucking ugly. Possessed with random spots of fur, and smelling of God knows what, I found my enthusiasm slightly dampened before boarding. Once up on my vantage point, I took off my poor Havainas and stashed them in the saddle's rigging, bare feet hanging down. As we began our steady ride into desert, I found out several more things about camels: They are absolutely prodigious shitters. 50% of the time, there is something coming out of a camel's ass. This fact was reinforced by the steady trail of dried camel dung along our trail, marking the way better than the windswept tracks. Another thing is that camels require what can be described as a certain amount of testicular fortitude to ride. In plain terms, they reduce your crotch to mincemeat if you don't know how to lean back correctly (and by "you," I mean me). The quilts on top of the hump did little to quell my chafing, as I found myself disembarking an hour and a half into the ride out of sheer necessity to walk barefoot through the desert for the last 40 minutes (by the way, I lost track in the dark of how many pieces of camel dung I marched over).
We rounded the last dune to sight of three small lights far off, marking our campsite - a small encampment staffed by one incredibly nice old Berber man and a veritable army of scorpion-killing cats. Situated at the base of a 200 ft sand dune, we unfurled our blankets and laid down to watch the stars. The stars materialized as we finished our food - a local Berber dish of onions and "meat." And by materialized, I mean popped out all over the sky, visible thanks to the total absence of light pollution. After doing the whole "Holy shit! We're in the Sahara!" thing for the next two or three hours, we settled down and stayed up most of the night (for those of you keeping track of my sleep tally, through the second night, I had a measly cumulative three hours) watching the amazing night sky.
The next morning, we were up at 4:30 to watch the sunrise. Scaling the 200 ft sand dune to reach our vantage point turned out to be exhausting (climbing up almost-vertical sand is worse than one might imagine for the legs), but after a fair amount of cursing, we straddled the skinny peak of the dune, with legs over each side to watch the sun enter. And what a sunrise it was, as the light raced across the sand, signaling that it was indeed time to head back to the camels before it became blisteringly hot.
We rode back through the dunes (I don't think many people realize how varied the terrain is in the desert - it's almost mountainous with all of the dunes, with no real open spaces of flat sand). From there, a mercifully cold shower at base camp, and back to the waiting Land Rovers for a rather painful ride for my rear back into Efroud. After spending a few hours at one of the local pools, all 17 of us boarded ONE (the number one rule of third-world transportation is cram, cram, cram) four-wheeled horse cart for a 5 klick dirt road voyage to a small Berber farm outside of the town, where we quickly unloaded, at some local dishes of sheep, and sprawled out under palm trees in the still-oppressive heat. From there, we took the horse cart back, then a grand taxi to Errichidea (the different types of transportation I had this past weekend was mind-boggling: buses, land rovers, camels, horse carts, grand taxis, petit taxis). After pulling some strings - "we are all Americans from the US Embassy and need to get on this bus to Rabat or we will call your supervisor" - we all managed to get back to Rabat in one piece monday morning.
Apologies for the length of the post, but the sheer amount of stuff we did this weekend hopefully necessitated it. Suffice to say, one of the craziest weekends of my life (man, I'm just chalking up crazy experiences over here), and despite functioning on a grand total of six hours of sleep for friday, saturday, and sunday nights, I wouldn't have had it any other way.
The trip started out on Friday night with a 10pm overnight CTM Bus to Errichidia. Seventeen upbeat Westerners and Moroccans (including our recently arrived, and understandably bewildered Dutch trainee, Bernadette) slogged our way through the bus lines to appropriate the back few rows of the bus. The trip started off un-eventfully - given the fact that I can't fall asleep in moving vehicles, I witnessed a lot of hair-rising and beautiful sights on our 8-hour overnight journey. The initial part of the trip took us past Meknes and Fes, before we entered the passes through the Atlas mountains. At this point, the ride became increasingly like a rollercoaster, and less and less like a jaunt through the Moroccan countryside. Adding to the ride was the beautiful Moroccan sunrise, which illuminated the mountain passes (a little bit too much for my tastes, sometimes you just shouldn't look down).
After a sleepless night, we arrived in Errichidia early in the morning and took a grand taxi (an old, 1970s-era Mercedes - used as a shared-ride taxi for 6 passengers) on an hour trip to the desert town of Erfoud. The population of 7000 was composed almost exclusively of Berbers - the "more" indigenous people of Morocco - in comparison to the Arabs. Tensions were clear, when I got out of the Taxi and was beset by two young men hawking local necklaces, I responded with a perfunctory but clear "La" - Dirija for "No." The older of the two guys looked at me blankly, and responded in English: "what is this word, 'la?' I don't understand this word." After briefly flailing to explain myself in French, he responded further: "'La' is not our language, I don't speak it."
Basically, there are 3 popular Berber dialects in Morocco, and while they're almost unheard in the coastal cities, they enjoy a strong ethnic role in Berber Morocco. The reason that this man was able to respond to me in English - which was somewhat startling - is that, as was explained by Moroccans to me, ethnic Berbers resent Arabic being imposed upon them, and also resent French. It's not uncommon to find Berbers who know their local dialect and another language such as English instead of Dirija or French.
Anyways, once we decamped in Erfoud, we quickly found refuge from the absolutely stifling dry heat in our local friend's apartment. After laying down for a few hours, we ate a lunch of couscous and drank some local "fresh" sour milk before heading off to our three waiting Land Rovers. From there, we took the land rovers (with our professional guides behind the wheel, unfortunately) on the hour trip to base camp by the Sahara. Forgoing traditional roads, we made the arid and flat land our highway, rolling along at suicidal speeds through some incredibly rough and varied terrain. As a side note, seeing a Land Rover cutting up a swath of dust in its wake as it travels over the open land with the dunes of the Sahara in the background is one of those images I'll have with me forever.
At base camp, we unpacked our things and gathered a few provisions for our night in the Desert. Taking the guides' advice, I packed lightly - two large bottles of water, sunglass clips, and this foreign-legion-style hat that I'd picked up at REI back in Minnesota. From there, it was onto the Camels for a two-hour ride straight into the Sahara.
I'd like to take a moment to express my feelings on the subject of camels. Firstly, up close and personal, Camels are really fucking ugly. Possessed with random spots of fur, and smelling of God knows what, I found my enthusiasm slightly dampened before boarding. Once up on my vantage point, I took off my poor Havainas and stashed them in the saddle's rigging, bare feet hanging down. As we began our steady ride into desert, I found out several more things about camels: They are absolutely prodigious shitters. 50% of the time, there is something coming out of a camel's ass. This fact was reinforced by the steady trail of dried camel dung along our trail, marking the way better than the windswept tracks. Another thing is that camels require what can be described as a certain amount of testicular fortitude to ride. In plain terms, they reduce your crotch to mincemeat if you don't know how to lean back correctly (and by "you," I mean me). The quilts on top of the hump did little to quell my chafing, as I found myself disembarking an hour and a half into the ride out of sheer necessity to walk barefoot through the desert for the last 40 minutes (by the way, I lost track in the dark of how many pieces of camel dung I marched over).
We rounded the last dune to sight of three small lights far off, marking our campsite - a small encampment staffed by one incredibly nice old Berber man and a veritable army of scorpion-killing cats. Situated at the base of a 200 ft sand dune, we unfurled our blankets and laid down to watch the stars. The stars materialized as we finished our food - a local Berber dish of onions and "meat." And by materialized, I mean popped out all over the sky, visible thanks to the total absence of light pollution. After doing the whole "Holy shit! We're in the Sahara!" thing for the next two or three hours, we settled down and stayed up most of the night (for those of you keeping track of my sleep tally, through the second night, I had a measly cumulative three hours) watching the amazing night sky.
The next morning, we were up at 4:30 to watch the sunrise. Scaling the 200 ft sand dune to reach our vantage point turned out to be exhausting (climbing up almost-vertical sand is worse than one might imagine for the legs), but after a fair amount of cursing, we straddled the skinny peak of the dune, with legs over each side to watch the sun enter. And what a sunrise it was, as the light raced across the sand, signaling that it was indeed time to head back to the camels before it became blisteringly hot.
We rode back through the dunes (I don't think many people realize how varied the terrain is in the desert - it's almost mountainous with all of the dunes, with no real open spaces of flat sand). From there, a mercifully cold shower at base camp, and back to the waiting Land Rovers for a rather painful ride for my rear back into Efroud. After spending a few hours at one of the local pools, all 17 of us boarded ONE (the number one rule of third-world transportation is cram, cram, cram) four-wheeled horse cart for a 5 klick dirt road voyage to a small Berber farm outside of the town, where we quickly unloaded, at some local dishes of sheep, and sprawled out under palm trees in the still-oppressive heat. From there, we took the horse cart back, then a grand taxi to Errichidea (the different types of transportation I had this past weekend was mind-boggling: buses, land rovers, camels, horse carts, grand taxis, petit taxis). After pulling some strings - "we are all Americans from the US Embassy and need to get on this bus to Rabat or we will call your supervisor" - we all managed to get back to Rabat in one piece monday morning.
Apologies for the length of the post, but the sheer amount of stuff we did this weekend hopefully necessitated it. Suffice to say, one of the craziest weekends of my life (man, I'm just chalking up crazy experiences over here), and despite functioning on a grand total of six hours of sleep for friday, saturday, and sunday nights, I wouldn't have had it any other way.
posted by Isaac at 6:11 AM
2 Comments:
That was an awesome account! I'll be heading into the Sahara at the end of August. I'm looking at booking through a US company, but was wondering how you went about planning your little stint into the desert.
Really enjoying the rest of your blog too!
This was hysterical!I laughed so hard I was actually getting stared at!I've been to Morocco a few times so I know where you're coming from.Great story. I hope I have as good a time in the desert as you did! (I'm going with previous posting!)
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