We headed out into the Sahara for sunrise. That statement feels like it should be followed with something more dramatic, than Ton took pictures and I walked along with her while she did it. So no drama.
We spent about an hour walking around on the edge of the desert. Even here the dunes are really impressive. Merzouga is the place that most of the tourists go to experience Morocco so it was pretty busy in the morning- caravans of tourists on camels, Land Cruisers, and quads went buzzing or sauntering out into the desert.
After a very enjoyable morning walk we headed back to François for the day. Tonight we are going to join the other tourists for the Sahara camping experience so we had the day to kill until our pick up at 5 pm.
Ton and I have been fighting a stomach thing, that wasn’t bad, but wasn’t good. We both seem to have gotten over it, but now Ton is coming down with a cold so we spent the afternoon lying in a cabana by the pool of the campground/hotel streaming movies.
We had the option of a two hour camel ride to our tents, or a Land Cruiser ride with a couple of stops en route. Everyone we have met says camel rides are fun for 15 minutes and then become an endurance test, so we went with the Land Cruiser.
Since it only takes a Land Cruiser about 15 minutes to cover the distance to the camp site we made a couple of cultural stops on the way. The first was for a dance and musical group made up of Sudanese who have migrated here over time.
The Sudanese have their own village near Merzouga and have set up a small concert hall in their community building. The songs were interesting and the fellow who played the one string guitar was quite good.
We then stopped at a Bedouin encampment. The Bedouin are a nomadic people and a significant number are trying to maintain their traditional lifestyle. The encampment was much more spartan than I imagined it would be. While we were there we only saw two women who were looking after the camp. Our guide invited us to enter one of the tents but it felt a bit weird as it was someones home and they weren’t there.
We arrived at our camp site which consisted of 10 semi-permanent tents with showers, toilets and electricity so it was very much glamping. We shared the camp with two Spanish couples from Catalonia who were very nice and fun to be with.
Sunset was nice, and we had a Tangine dinner. Ton and I were saying to each other that Tangines are nice, but after a while they get a little boring. The Spanish heard us and laughed and said they were saying the same thing in Catalan. Then one of the ladies said she really missed wine with dinner.
There was supposed to be music and dancing after dinner, but by the time dinner and our after dinner coffee was done it was 10:30 pm and I could feel Tons cold coming on, so we made our excuses and turned in for the evening.