Cruisin' on Camels

I remember reading books about the Sahara Desert when I was young with photos of camels walking into the sunset so peacefully, and I would imagine that the only noise for miles would be the sand being kicked up by the camels feet. I never thought that one day I would be making this a reality. I can’t believe we really just experienced this.

We booked our desert tour as part of a private 4 day/3 night tour of Morocco from Fes to Marrakech. The best part of the entire tour was our night in the Sahara Desert (more to come on our total experience later...). We started our camel trek in Merzouga, which is a small village near the Algerian border and near the edge of Erg Chebbi. To build up our excitement and anticipation, we had one full day touring around the desert where we had the chance to visit a desert nomad family, and had berbere pizza for lunch.

We finally set out for our berbere desert camp at 6:00 p.m. with other small groups of tourists. It was breathtaking to look around and see nothing but sand dunes as the sun was beginning to set behind us. One of our favorite places from home in Michigan is Saugatuck Dunes State Park, but after this experience I’m not sure I’ll think about sand dunes the same way ever again! I can’t describe the feeling of being in the middle of the desert on a camel, and of course the photos don’t do it justice.

Our camp was pretty luxurious. We had a mattress (even though it was rock hard) and working toilets. We were served a candlelit dinner under the stars (chicken tagine), and it was one of our best meals we had the whole time in Morocco. After dinner we gathered around the drums where we danced and clapped along to some traditional berbere music. They even taught us how to use the krakebs (qraqeb).

We woke early to watch the sunrise over the sand dunes. I’ve only ever done this twice in my life, the other time being in Uruguay, and it was absolutely beautiful. It was so incredibly quiet, besides the occasional grunting from the camels in the background. Immediately after the sunrise, we began our hour and a half-ish trek back to our riad. We were both quite sore for a couple of days after riding! We were welcomed back with breakfast and the opportunity to shower. After sweating in the insanely hot temperatures and being covered in sand from dancing and riding camels, this was one of those experiences where you have the best shower of your life!

After breakfast, we were ready to continue our way to Marrakech, but Ricardo asked our driver if we could take one last spin through the sand in our Toyota Land Cruiser before leaving the desert… we just had to go one more time...