The next morning, we were to board the van again at 8:30am and after picking up the group from the second hotel, we made a brief stop at this place with amazing scenery. Unfortunately, we were not sure where we were again as the driver just treated it as a rest stop again.
After picking up the rest of our group, we made our way to what I can only assume is Dades Valley. We had a guide here who took us through a brief walk of the valley and we eventually ended up at a home where Berber rugs were made.
We were given a brief demonstration of the process and offered some mint tea and although they repeatedly told us that there was no expectation to buy, I really hate when they bring us to places like this, as everyone feels bad for not making a purchase.
From the moment we were dropped off in this area, kids kept approaching our group and I could see the parents encouraging the kids to come up to us to ask for money. Some of them would give us little animals they’ve woven out of grass as an exchange, but the thing that stuck out to me the most was that these kids were likely not being educated. It was the middle of the morning and there were so many kids just wandering around in the streets and of the few that tried to talk to us, they kept trying to guess where we were from. Normally, we would get Chinese or Japanese, but these kids were making guesses such as Spain and France, which led me to believe that their knowledge of the world is quite shallow. These kids were probably 11-12 years old, which was why I was quite surprised at their lack of knowledge.
We visited Todra Gorge during the hottest time of the day and we had the most brazen guide here. He basically just led us through a very short pathway and we spent the rest of the time walking around ourselves, but he was very demanding when it came to tipping and he blatantly embarrassed a member of our tour group when he refused to give a tip. He came into our van and said “remember, we don’t work for free” and then turned around and got off the bus, leaving everything utterly confused. It wasn’t until we reached out lunch stop that everyone started talking and we put all the pieces together.
The rest of the afternoon was spent driving towards Merzouga, the town on the edge of the Sahara Desert. Again, we were split into three groups and being that I was part of the last group, we didn’t start riding our dromedaries until about 6:30pm and we stopped half way so that we could watch the sunset. The entire ride took about 90 minutes and aside from the downhill parts being uncomfortable, most of the ride was okay for me. I know many people complained afterwards about their inner thighs hurting, but I was quite okay.
It was almost completely dark by the time we arrived at camp and we were immediately led to a sitting area in the middle of the camp to rest. After about 30 minutes, a delicious chicken tajine was served for dinner. Surprisingly, most people agreed that it was the best meal we had on the 3 day tour.
After dinner, the guides brought out some Berber instruments and started to play some traditional music for us before handing the reigns over to us and having us try their instruments. This didn’t last long because everyone was quite eager to climb the dunes to see the stars. We had already caught a glimpse of the stars during dinner but the guides promised that if we climbed higher, we would have a better view. Climbing sand dunes is a tough task any time of day but doing so in the middle of the pitch black darkness was both a cool and scary experience. Thank goodness for mini flashlights and cell phones that led the way. We took a brief rest halfway up the dunes before continuing up higher, but the strange thing is that the stars looked much clearer from halfway up. Perhaps it was because the clouds had moved, but it did seem fuzzier higher up. A few of us decided to take another rest while the rest of the group kept climbing to the very top. We probably stayed on the sand dune for over 2 hours, just sitting up there, having great conversations and enjoying the stars. I’m especially thankful for the time spent there as I found out later on that the people at the other camps didn’t get to have this experience.
We arrived back at our camp after 1am and we were set to leave at 4:30am. We had set our alarms for 4:15am but when we got up, it was pure silence and we thought that we had the wrong time. It wasn’t until we got out to the middle of the camp that we realized that most people had already woken up and were ready to go. Thank goodness we decided to set an alarm instead of counting on the guides to wake us!
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