Spring Break, part 2

So, where was I? Right, climbing onto camels and riding off into the Sahara. 

The three nights in the desert are by far the most rugged camping experience I’ve ever had. This is not to say that our trek was difficult per se, but rather that I’ve never gone nearly so long without seeing a toilet. I also did not change my shirt between the time we left Auberge Les Roches on Saturday afternoon and the time we returned there early on Tuesday morning.

Perhaps our dirtiness played a part in making us feel, as we did by the time we returned to civilization, that we had totally lost our minds. On the other hand, the desert itself doesn’t need much help to make one feel that way. They are just so large and so far outside the realm of what the normal human brain is willing to accept. Terrain, one’s cerebral cortex insists, just does not look like this. The analogy which sprang to mind was that of an ant in a sandbox.

It’s easy to imagine getting hopelessly lost in the seemingly-endless landscape of orange dunes, all of which look essentially the same. Luckily for us, we were accompanied by our fabulous guides, Moustapha and Ahmed; one of the best parts of our trip was getting to hang out with these awesome locals[1]. They told us some of the silliest jokes I’ve ever heard. The one currently making the rounds all over Morocco is about Qaddafi’s accent. Some of you may be aware of a horrible speech Qaddafi made in which he declared his intention to massacre every single rebel “street to street, house to house, room to room, person to person.” The Arabic word for street is zankat, but Qaddafi has a funny accent, so he said “zanga zanga” instead of “zankat zankat.” Hilarious, right? No? What if it was dubbed over Shakira? Still not funny? Well, you clearly haven’t been to the desert.

We camped in the dunes the first and third nights, at a small campsite consisting of two sleeping tents and a sort of small tin house where we ate dinner, a delicious tajine with chicken and vegetables. The guardian of a nearby gite showed up after dinner and they all serenaded us with bongo drums and a guitar that was short one key. Each of us was forced to play the drums a bit, and they asked us to sing American songs for them to play along to. The only songs we could adequately remember which were suitable for gnawa-like bongo rhythms were Shakira’s “Waka Waka”[2] and K’Naan’s “Waving Flag.” Moustapha, as it turns out, is in an African Blues band.

The next day we made our leisurely way towards a nomad-style house near the Algerian border, which is marked by a very sheer and dramatic-looking cliff at the edge of a rocky, barren plain. On the way, we stopped for a tasty fish salad lunch[3] which Ahmed somehow produced out of nowhere. We lay in the sun singing pop songs we remember from our ‘90s childhoods. Amelia had a fake karate battle against Moustapha. When we got to the nomad village, there wasn’t much to do besides sit in a tent, stare out at the landscape, and sip shockingly sweet glasses of tea[4] which our guides brought to us on a tray.

We had delicious, delicious couscous for dinner and, after asking us for paper, our guides demonstrated remarkable artistic ability by drawing us lots of pictures of camels, palm trees, and the six of us trekking across the desert.

We had to wake up painfully early on Tuesday morning, around 4:30, in order to pack up and trek back to the hotel in time to catch our 8 AM bus for Ouarzazate. Mackenzie was deathly ill, but demonstrated commendable self-control and got on her camel anyway. It was incredibly cold, and camels should never be ridden in the dark because they’re actually not the most stable of mounts. On the other hand, there probably aren’t very many people in the world who can say that they’ve watched the sun rise from camelback while riding out of the Sahara.

We got back to the inn at about 6:30, where they fed us another great breakfast and we all had barely enough time to sort of jump into the shower, hose ourselves off, and jump out before Mackenzie, Amelia and I had to get in a cab for the bus station. Hila headed back north to Meknes to meet up with some of our other friends, but the rest of us were beach bound!

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[1] Moustapha, in addition to speaking excellent English, also spoke Derrija, fus-ha, at least one Amazigh language, French, Spanish, German, and a few words of Japanese. He has only had six years of formal schooling.

[2] Which all Moroccans know because 1)they love Shakira because she’s part Arab and 2)the song is about Africa.

[3] I had no idea that canned mackerel was so delicious. Adding that to my shopping list.

[4] Have I written about Moroccan tea? If I were a better blogger, I would have done a whole post just on things like food and tea. Moroccans love mint tea, which they drink several times a day. It’s green tea with large quantities of mint leaves and about as much sugar as water. That’s not really much of an exaggeration. It’s sort of like southern sweet tea, actually.

Spring Break Stories, part 1

It’s long past time for another blog post, and my fantastic Spring Break might be just the motivation I need. All photo credits go to my lovely traveling companions Mackenizie, Amelia and Hila, as I left my camera’s memory card in Rabat. Luckily, through the magic of Facebook, it’s easy to share, and I took lots of mental photos.

We left Rabat by train on Friday, March 11. We somehow squeezed our bodies onto the most crowed train this side of the Nile. After briefly considering the possibility that we would all run out of oxygen and die before we ever got to Meknès, we had the good luck to find ourselves next to a couple of seats at the moment they happened to be vacated. These seats happened to be located in a compartment full of friendly Moroccans having an animated discussion about the price of living in various cities in Morocco, which I was very excited to be able to understand. Everyone passed around the food they had brought, because that’s just how public transportation is done in Morocco. Our fellow travelers turned out to be animal lovers, and pulled out their smart phones to show us pictures of their pets. I was the only member of our party who spoke French, so I had to serve as an intermediary for most of the conversation.

After we arrived in Meknes, we ran to the bus depot adjoining the train station and caught a bus south to Merzuga just moments before it started rolling. If you’ve never taken a night bus, there’s probably no way to truly put into words what it is like. I had never taken a night bus before, and somehow I had imagined that there would be something special about the bus that would make it more bearable at night. Perhaps I should chalk this up to the Night Bus scene from Harry Potter, in which Harry accidentally hails a bus with a second floor full of beds. As it turns out, however, a night bus is just a normal bus that runs at night because, I suppose, its route is so long that everyone would rather sleep through it. The problem with this theory is that buses are incredibly uncomfortable to sleep on, particularly if you are on your way to the desert and packed accordingly but your route takes you through mountainous terrain where there is actually snow on the ground. At least we had almost the entire bus to ourselves.

We had a rest stop at about 2 AM. My friends and I piled out of the bus to stock up on snack foods. Because it was 2 AM and we were eating convenience store potato chips and cookies on a freezing cold bus in the middle of the mountains in Morocco, everything seemed hysterically funny at this point. At some point we noticed that one of the covered older women sitting at the front of the bus was gesturing at us. We decided that she was pointing to the bottle of water in the overhead compartment across the aisle from her seat. I decided to go get the bottle down for her and offer her a cookie from the bag I had just opened (because that’s how it’s done in Morocco, see: people on the train). When I held out the bag to offer her a cookie, however, she seized hold of the entire bag! Before I knew what was happening, the bag was out of my grasp and all the way on the other side of her seat. The old lady smiled at me victoriously. I made a vague attempt to give her the bottle of water, but she stopped me and waved me back to my seat. I retreated to the back of the bus.

We arrived in the tiny village of Merzuga at a little before 7 in the morning. It was barely light outside, but we could tell that nothing was open. “Oh, no,” I thought. “How are we ever going to find the hotel?” My mood did not improve when I got to the top of the bus’s stairs and saw two men in djellabas waiting just outside. “Here we go again,” I grumbled internally. “They’re undoubtedly going to offer me a 1,000 Dh taxi ride or try to direct me to the wrong hotel, and that’s assuming they’re not just here to heckle some American girls for their own amusement. Better get my game face on.” Sure enough, as I stepped off the bus, the djellaba-clad Moroccan men pushed forwards. I started to assume my “no” posture when suddenly one of the men held out a piece of paper that read “HILA,” which is the name of one of my traveling companions.

He was a taxi driver sent by the Auberge Les Roches, which I highly recommend if you ever happen to be in Merzuga. Half-asleep and half-crazed, we were ushered into a carpeted salon where the owner of the auberge introduced himself, explained that we would be given a room where we could rest until it was time to start our trek, and brought us breakfast. After feasting on a delicious Moroccan-style breakfast, we spent a few hours trying to recover from the night bus. None of us got much sleep, though – maybe it had been too strange a day already. By around noon we wandered outside into the auberge’s lovely little court yard, where we discovered a staircase up to a rooftop terrace. It was only at this moment that I really, truly grasped that we were at the edge of the Sahara[1] The view was literally breathtaking, as views in Morocco so often are.

Lunch on the terrace. Notice the epic dunes in the background.

The terrain changes from unremarkable, flat, rocky plain to mountain-sized orange sand dunes with no transition whatsoever. One of the auberge’s many employees called up to ask if we’d like to eat lunch on the terrace, which of course we would; lunch turned out to be a fabulous tagine with eggs and tomato sauce.[2]

After lunch we explored the little town, which was eerily empty. I wondered if people weren’t taking a long lunch-and-siesta, which they often do here[3]. We bought nine liters of water, as well as several rolls of toilet paper, to take with us into the desert, and Hila acquired a scarf from a man who was very happy to see us for the chance to practice his English. He and I had an animated conversation in French about whether English is a better language than French, and he showed us how to tie a scarf in the traditional Berber way.

Yes, that's me in the lower left-hand corner. Observe Berber-style scarf.

We walked back to the auberge, and soon enough it was time to pack our bags and head out to where the camels were waiting….

TO BE CONTINUED, because it took me a week to write this much and it’s so long I think it might take you a week to read it! There’s a program excursion to Tangier and Chefchaouen this weekend, but I should be back by Sunday so maybe I can write a little more then

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[1] Did you know that “sahara” just means “desert” in Arabic?

[2] Moroccans use eggs in ways I’d never have thought of, but it almost always turns out well.

[3] Also, Moroccan lunch time is usually closer to 1:30 or 2:00 than to noon.