where I've never been : Morocco Day 7

It’s Easter Sunday and what a day! We had an early start - bags on the bus by 7:10 AM, breakfast at 7:15 and on the road by 8 AM. We ate on the terrace at the hotel restaurant and enjoyed a beautiful view of the Kasbah at Ait Benhaddou one more time before we left!

We headed out in a south-westerly direction, stopping for photos and a toilet break. We passed more kasbahs and many towns.

Because of these picturesque kasbahs, the Berber town of Ouarzazate is home to the CLA Film Studios.

Movies such as Lawrence of Arabia, The Last Temptation of Christ, Gladiator, Kingdom of Heaven and part of the Game of Thrones TV series were filmed here.

At our morning rest stop someone mentioned that they had just seen camels. I bustled over to the corner of the complex to have a look. Actually they were dromedaries. The difference, I learned, is that camels have two humps, whereas dromedaries have one. A young girl of about 9 or 10 years came out with a plastic Coke bottle, filled it with water from a hose, then waved it near the animal. Much to my amazement, the camel picked it up with it's lips, raised it high, drank it all, then dropped the bottle when he was done! The girl did this a couple of times. It was so funny to see the dromedary just drop it on the ground, almost like he was saying, "OK, I'm done! Now pick it up!"

Abdellah pointed out a cemetery as we drove by, and talked about Berber funerary traditions. Being outside the culture, I wouldn't have recognized the area as a graveyard. The rocks that mark where the dead are buried looked quite unremarkable to me.

The road was straight for awhile but began to wind again as we went through a pass. When I say wind, I mean constant curves and hair pin turns. The scenery was in stark contrast to the day before. It was rocky, with little vegetation and quite bleak.

Our guide talks about useful Morocco and useless Morocco. This was definitely useless Morocco.

When we got to Zagora, it was time for lunch, but first we made a photo stop at the famous Timbuktu sign. There are various spellings, one of which is pictured in the photo. Nowadays, Timbuktu is a metaphor for a place 'at the end of the world'. But it is a real town in central Mali on the Niger River, 52 days away by camel. No thank you!

We were the only customers in a pretty little hotel restaurant. Our meal was pre-ordered for us: a delicious salad (tomatoes, cucumbers and onions), chicken tangine and fruit. I mostly ate salad as my stomach was feeling queasy again from all the twists and turns.

After lunch, the 4x4 jeeps were at the restaurant ready to take us to the desert camp. We had packed a small bag to take with us to Erg Chiggaga Desert Camp. Soon the road narrowed to a wide one lane. When oncoming traffic came, both drivers would pull over seemingly at the last second and bounce along the unpaved section of the road until the other vehicle was safely past. I have no idea how long we drove along that road as I had my eyes closed and tried to sleep. We made a stop for water and bought three 1.5 liters each!

After perhaps a couple of hours we turned off the pavement, or did the pavement just disappear? Then, THEN that’s where the 4x4 vehicles became necessary. We seemingly drove where there were no roads at all. I had no idea how the drivers knew where they were going. It was like bouncing along in the rough fields at home in a pick-up truck, except that we were driving at ridiculously high speeds. I couldn’t see the speedometer which was probably a good thing.

Sometimes we would hit a bank of sand and just go flying. The blowing sand reminded me of a snow blizzard back home. At times, the visibility was close to zero.

We stopped a couple of times and finally arrived at the camp. There are several tents around in a circle. There is a dining tent and they gave us some mint tea, roasted nuts and wafer cookies.

There are even flush sit down toilets and electric lights in the tents. I’m not sure if everything is solar powered but there is a huge solar panel on one of the roofs.

After our refreshments we went for a dromedary ride. Our guide had told us to make sure we asked for a Moroccan dromedary not an Algerian one as it would take us across the border instead of home! Haha! He got me good!

The animals were joined in 4 ‘trains’ and we headed off together for about half an hour. The sand constantly blows and there is no keeping it out of your hair, clothes, skin, eyes, shoes, etc. etc., so there is no use trying.