Erg Chebbi, Morocco - Camels & Dunes

The trip into the desert was one of the most memorable parts of our honeymoon. We learned that at night it gets very, very cold in the desert, and that camels don't really walk faster than humans. We also got to see the sunrise and sunset over the dunes, ate homemade Moroccan food, and got to make friends with our desert guide, Youssef.

Here's a photo of another caravan heading into the desert. I believe we took this from camel-top as we were heading out to our camp, in the far southeastern corner of Morocco, only a few miles from the Algerian border (closed for the last few decades after a border war between the two countries).  There are about 30 separate camps nestled in the dunes, but on the way out to ours we didn't see any other camps, just one other group of Spaniards riding camels too. In addition to camel tours, there are some 4x4 tours that visit the same dunes and in this picture you can see a local speeding past on the motorcycle. 

Here's a photo of our camels. Will's is the darker one in front, Omar Sharif, named for the famous Egyptian actor. My camel was Jimi Hendrix; gotta love globalization. Our guide Youssef walked ahead of Will's camel holding the rope and leading the way to the camp. Youssef walked the whole 2 hours; hard work going up and down the dunes! 

On our way out to camp we stopped for a few minutes to enjoy the sunset. Here's WP's camel again resting in the sun.

And some more shots of the dunes, it was so peaceful! 

Check out this video WP took from his camel, which gives a better sense of the size of the dunes, and our slow progress through them. Also, if you listen closely you can hear Youssef chatting on his cell phone; who would have thought there's good reception out there!

Then WP decided it would be fun to slide down a dune...only to find out that the sand provides enough resistance that you don't actually slide, you just sit. Ha!

Finally he decided to roll down on this side, here he is at the bottom of the hill: 

And trying to get the sand out of his shoes, a lost cause: 

 

Just as it started getting dark we made it to the campsite. Here's a shot of the first stars comings out above a dune silhouette:

The camp was definitely "rustic," but did the job for the one night we were out there. This is the entrance to our sleeping tent. We had a small mattress with two blankets over it and ended up sleeping with 6 more blankets on top of us. There was a separate tent nearby with tables and benches where we ate dinner. In the morning Youssef came by to wake us up before sunrise by calling out "Mohammed, Fatima, time to get up!"

We ended up being the only two people on the tour, so we had lots of one on one time to get to know our guide. The slight complication was that Youssef speaks almost no English, so all the communication we were doing was in Spanish (it is really popular for Spanish people to come to the desert, so a lot of the guides know Spanish).  After dinner, Youssef made a small fire for us to sit around and he started singing some Berber songs and playing the drums you can see in the photo below. Eventually we ended up telling jokes back and forth (translating on the spot from English to Spanish), and even learned some good ones we want to try to remember.

Remnants of our fire from the previous night:

Here's what our little camp looked like, tucked away in a valley between some big dunes. 

Youssef grew up as a nomad in the desert, and when he was 15 his parents decided to move to a nearby town to settle more permanently. He never went to school because by the time he was 15 his parents decided it was too late for him. I think he is probably around 19 or 20 years old now, and seems to be doing OK for himself as a guide. We didn't have a whole lot in common with Youssef, but once all of us got more comfortable, we ended up having a good time. Funny guy.

The morning was so cold! After our wake up call we headed up the dunes to the "camel garage". Omar Sharif and Jimi Hendrix just hung out all night - not tied up or anything - and were there waiting for us in the morning. This was taken just as the sun was coming up. WP is sporting his pyjama pants over his jeans, the latest in desert style.  

And, to be fair, here's me being really cold too:

This pretty much sums up our desert excursion - we're such nerds, but we had to do this pose. Youssef took this one for us in the morning as the sun was rising. You can tell WP's camel was getting a little anxious to get back to the town to get fed. 

 

And with a different view:
                           

Back at the hotel where the tours leave from they had this delicious Moroccan breakfast waiting for us. Different breads with jams, butter and cheese!

Our original guides Ali and Omar came back to pick us up after breakfast, and we headed to a nearby market to see some more sights. Here's a one merchant with many delicious looking piles of spices: 

The livestock part of the market was pretty cool. This is where you bring your sheep, goats and other large animals to be inspected and bought. They are tied up along ropes according to species.

We also got a huge kick out of the donkey parking lot. All the people who bring veggies from small family farms to the market usually carry them in on the backs of donkeys.  People may live hours away from the "big" town so often on the larger roads you'll see people with their donkeys plodding along to get to the market. There is a guy who works at this lot watching the donkeys for the equivalent of about 10 cents/donkey for the whole day. 

Here are some cute little animals being sold (not as pets I'm guessing...) - rabbits and chickens are pictured below and look like they're huddling for warmth in the crates. 

Here's our little group! Omar, our driver throughout the whole trip, is standing to my left and Ali, our main guide, is on Will's right. Omar's brother Youssef (different from the desert Youssef) is on the far left and did the driving for us on the last day of the trip. 

Ali was a great guide - very knowledgable and friendly. We liked Omar a lot too. He spoke Berber, Arabic, a tiny bit of French and no English, so our verbal communication was pretty limited. We found out from Ali that he was a truck driver in the war with Algeria, and somehow that made Omar make more sense. He was like our Berber Grandpa; quiet most of the time but very smiley and seemed to be friends with everyone we met. We figured if he made it driving through the war, he could get us safely from town to town without any problem. 

We really started to miss Omar on our last day when Youssef was driving us to Fez and Ali had already left us to head to his next tour group. Moroccan road behavior is crazy, that much we already knew. Cars pass other cars and trucks all the time, sometimes on curves and at high speeds. Somehow when Omar did all this it seemed natural, but with Youssef there were more than a few times when I had to close my eyes. I think all of this was made worse when we realized Youssef was sick. At least 3 times he had to pull over to throw up in the bushes... not the most encouraging behavior from the guy who has  your life in his hands.

When we got to Fez if became clear pretty quickly that he didn't know where our hotel was, even though it was in the new city (less confusing part of town) directly next to the main train station. We purposely chose a hotel that'd be easy for them to find, and Ali assured us that the one we picked was "famous" and everyone should know where it was... everyone except Youssef apparently. It was kind of like what I imagine I would be like driving in New York City: lost, confused, and frustrated. After stopping to ask a few people and helping Youssef when we could with signage, and a couple near-misses where he started driving down one-way streets the wrong way (fun!), we found our hotel and were SO HAPPY to be there.

We didn't have a ton of time to see Fez, so just walked around some of the new town where we were staying. We were happy to get some photos of these political advertisements that we had been seeing throughout the country. These charts are painted on walls all over the place (often on schools) with stencil symbols for the different political parties, each corresponding to a number written in the box. Ali told us this helps folks with less education to vote for the party they support by using the symbol and number only and not necessarily words.

Here's another political stencil and a photo of Will hanging out on the train to Tangier. The train ride was awesome and we got to see a bunch of the Moroccan countryside. For most of the 5-hour trip we had this 6-seat compartment to ourselves.

From Tangier we took an hour long taxi ride to the border with Ceuta, the part of Spain that is in Africa. More on Ceuta and Gibraltar coming next... here's a sneak peek shot from Gibraltar (get pumped!):

Morocco - Marrakech, Kasbahs, Caves

Our first stop on the big adventure was Marrakech, Morocco. We stayed a couple nights in the old part of the city before getting picked up by our tour guide, Ali, for the next part of the trip. Our first impressions of Morocco were pretty good; we wandered around the marketplaces, ate delicious (vegetarian!) food, and just generally had a great time.

Pretty much everyone we met spoke Arabic, Berber, French, English and sometimes even some Spanis; we were impressed! When they heard we were living in Spain usually the first comment was "Aren't Spanish people so bad at speaking English? They really need to work on that." I got a kick out of that because (A) it's true, and (B) because it is true, I have a job. I think Moroccans who work in tourism have spent years watching movies and TV shows in English with subtitles, something the Spanish haven't started to do yet (everything is dubbed here).

Ok, but back to Marrakech! We stayed in an adorable little riad (a traditional Moroccan house with an interior garden or courtyard) that included an amazing breakfast of Moroccan breads, eggs, jams, butter, and Moroccan mint tea (which is mint tea mixed with green tea usually served with a lot of sugar, but you can ask for it unsweetened). The photo on the left is the courtyard and breakfast tables, so nice.  

The photo on the right is the entrance to the spa Les Bains de Marrakech, where we had the best massages ever! We also did the traditional Moroccan hammam, which is basically an hour in a steam room and then a hearty exfoliation administered by Moroccan ladies. That part was a little weird, but all in all, it was an awesome experience. The other perk is that since it's in Morocco, it was very reasonably priced - would definitely go back again some day just to hang out at Les Bains! 

 

The old city and the new city of Marrakech are divided by the city walls. Outside the walls, the streets are wider and more modern, and all the city's newer housing developments are built around fancy restaurants and international stores. We ventured out of the city walls for some delicious meals of Moroccan food and Thai food (something we don't see a lot of in Spain). Inside the walls the old city is very crowded and crazy, with tons of tiny streets, horse-drawn carriages, marketplaces and people. Here's me with the city walls:

We didn't do too much shopping, but of course, we had to stop by and see some of the Moroccan rugs that we'd heard so much about. As you can see they have a bunch of designs...the stores can be kind of overwhelming though! 

One of our favorite stops was the pharmacy. The picture below is outside the shop, with brightly colored potpourri, and lots of spices. One of the purchases we made was a bag of the Moroccan 40-spice blend ras el hanout, so tasty! 

It was fun going to Morocco right after visiting the Alhambra with WP's parents in Granada. So much of the tile work and wood carvings look like what we saw in Spain. Here's me chillin' at the ancient Islamic college called Ben Youssef Madrasa. 

The food in Marrakech - and Morocco in general - was amazing! The traditional Moroccan dishes like vegetable tagine (veggies and cous cous) were great, and the French influence meant some amazing salads with goat cheese and delicious pastries! Here's a lunch we had on a warm roof terrace - Moroccan mixed salads of beets, potatoes, and carrots in the foreground and little fried cheesy triangles on the right. 

A common dessert in Morocco is just "fresh fruit", which sounds awesome, right? You might expect a fruit salad type of dessert, which sometimes you'll get (including delicious orange slices with cinnamon and sugar on them), but one time this is what they brought me. Why hello fresh fruit, are you happy to see me too?  

                            

After an awesome couple of days sight seeing and relaxing in Marrakech, our tour guide Ali and SUV driver Omar picked us up at our hotel. It didn't take long to get outside the city, pretty soon we were going up some pretty steep snow-capped peaks in the Atlas Mountains. 

Along the way we stopped at a few really cool kasbahs (fortresses) from centuries ago. This is the first one we went to; notice also the giant stork's nest atop the tower! From the way it looks on the outside you expect the inside to be mostly mud/adobe walls, but for this one that was not the case. Inside there were rooms of beautiful tile work and even some painted silk panels. The picture of us in the last post sitting on the windowsill was inside this kasbah.

Here's another shot of us inside: 

Our second kasbah stop of the trip was this amazing one called Aït Benhaddou. Most of the buildings are abandoned, but some people still live here and some others have opened up shops to sell things to tourists. These buildings have been used to film all kinds of famous movies like Gladiator, Jesus of Nazareth, Lawrence of Arabia, Kundun, and The Mummy. 

One lady who lives in the kasbah and weaves rugs also makes some money by allowing tourists to come in to her home and see some props used in the movies. She has some photos up of famous people like Russell Crowe and also keeps some fake swords and spears around. Here's us acting out a brutal fight scene a la Gladiator: 

One of the other hilarious highlights of this part of the trip was our tour of Atlas Studios, located in Ouarzazate.  Atlas Studios houses leftover sets from Hollywood movies that are set in place like Tibet, Egypt, Jerusalem and Rome. We learned that Hollywood uses Morocco all the time since it is safer and easier to get to than places like Saudi Arabia and Algeria. In the movies these sets probably look pretty good, but in real life they are pretty much just pieces of styrofoam falling apart. They keep them around because they can reuse them for new movies - with a little paint and the right camera angle, right? 


Here's WP with a lion from the movie Kundun: 

And the great Temple of Luxor from Egypt (falling apart and much smaller than the original): 

One of the funny things about our guides Ali and Omar was how they seemed to know everyone. Ali has been in the tourism business for about 10 years, and Omar is a family friend of Ali's. It seemed like every roadside photo op and rest stop, Ali and Omar had old friends they'd greet with hugs and smiles. Once we stopped for lunched at this restaurant that is not even officially open yet. A friend of Ali's is working on opening it, so I guess in a way we were test clients. When we arrived they hurriedly set up this table and umbrella for us on the roof of the building:

They made us this very tasty curried vegetable pizza. Everywhere you go in Morocco people serve you mint tea and call it "Berber Whiskey" (Berbers are the indigenous peoples of North Africa and are usually Muslim, so definitely don't drink whiskey, although beer and wine are surprisingly popular in Morocco, so go figure), and so as a joke Ali called this the "Berber Pizza". 

Another interesting stop we made was to visit some of Ali's friends who live in some caves in the mountains. We had to off-road for an hour or so to get to where they live, and passed many herds of sheep and goats on the way. This family has a few caves that are side by side and they mostly raise animals to sell at the nearby town. When we were visiting the father of the family was not home because he had walked into town to sell some stuff and was still on his way back. Here's a shot of the entrance to one of the caves with some of the lambs out front: 

This little guy was pretty adorable, and they let us hold him! He was more like a puppy than a lamb, he kept running after us and trying to see if our shoes, camera and clothes were edible.

                            


The family invited us into the cave for some mint tea. This picture came out a little dark, but you can see our guide Ali on the left, driver Omar near the entrance and one of the sons pouring tea on the right. The lamb got to come in too.

It was a little sad to see the conditions this family lives in, just from a sanitation and comfort perspective.  From what Ali told us though, this is just their way of life and they wouldn't want to change it by moving to one of the nearby villages; and who are we to say they should?  The mom of the family has had 12 children, most of whom are grown up and have moved to the nearby town, but she says she's just too old to move now and wants to stay where she is. This is one of her grandkids, apparently staying with Grandma and Grandpa for awhile. She was adorable, but a little suspicious of us until Omar gave her some cardboard packaging from our lunch to use as a toy.

All in all I think stopping by to visit was good, and I'm pretty sure some of the money we paid for the tour trickled down to her and her family. On the way out of the foothills we came across these girls out with their herd of camels. In this photo they were running towards our car to ask us for money. This happened to us a lot, but usually Ali would give the kids mandarin oranges instead. I thought that was an elegant solution to what can sometimes be an awkward situation. 

Back on the road again we stopped to see a mosque before heading off for our camel adventure in the desert. Naturally across the street from the mosque there is a store crowded with knick-knacks and Moroccan goods that we definitely did not need to buy. Of course, the shopkeep insisted on wrapping us up Berber style to show us how we might look if our names were actually Mohammed and Fatima (which is what Ali started calling us early on). 

After some more driving through desert (much of which looks like Arizona), we finally got to the SERIOUS desert - black rocks and sand dunes! More on the dunes and camel ride coming in the next post... stay tuned!