My friends and I recently come back from a Desert adventure, during our stay in Morocco.
A lot of what we do here in Morocco is last-minute and hardly planned, just kind of hopping into a grand-taxi or on a bus and going until we stop. But for this trip, a certain degree of co-ordination and planning was required. So Melanie and I sat down to discover. After lots of google searches and trip advisor comparisons, we selected a company ( Morocco Excursions Company) with which to tour and emailed the guide for more information. The package we selected was a full day and night deal- starting with breakfast on the saturday and going through breakfast the next morning. ( here is the full itinerary from their website : www.morocco-excursion.com) We finally heard back from him on Tuesday and plans were set in to motion. In a group that started with 6, we soon found ourselves with 19 people. So until Thursday afternoon our plan was to take taxis from Ifrane (our town) to Fez (a bigger city roughly an hour away) and then an overnight bus down to Merzouga (the village on the edge of the Sahara) and do the same thing coming back. The problem with that ended up being the overnight bus would put us home around 8am Monday, and several of our group members had 8am classes. Then from there we discovered there was no official bus station, bus schedule, or way to purchase ticket in advance. That set off alarm bells all over the place, so once again Mel and I sat down to figure out an alternative plan. We ended up finding a private bus company, and with her mad French skills Mel managed to negotiate a bus to pick us up at school, drive us the 7 or so hours down to Merzouga, wait there, and then bring us home Sunday. It was a miraculous discovery that saved our sanity, time, and wallets. So everything was hunky dory and arranged. We ended up with 17 people, and finalized our plans less than 24 hours before our departure. So Friday afternoon around 4:00pm we all assembled. Everyone had their backpacks, passports and a water bottle, and we piled on the bus to go. The ride down to Merzouga was relatively uneventful- I ended up watching World War Z with Chase (which is actually a terrific movie), and we had a half an hour gas station stop somewhere in the middle of nowhere. We finally reached our hotel at around 12:20am, and they had dinner ready for us when we pulled in. Guys, you haven't lived until you have consumed home-made Moroccan food. The flavors, colors and spices they blend are both a work of art and delicious on so many levels. I wish I could explain what they made for us, but its too difficult. A sum would be eggs, lamb meat, bread, and lentils. So good. So after we were all stuffed we went to our rooms and slep.
Saturday morning dawned cloudy and cool, with enough of a breeze to be comfortable. We got up and had breakfast, then piled into four 4x4 offroading vans to set out for our daytime romp round the Sahara. Our first stop was a little village maybe two miles away, where we spent a while listening to and dancing with Sudanese musicians. They fed us tea and nuts, chanted and we had a grand old time. After that we drove across a volcanic rock field and looking for desert foxes. They are cute little white animals, with huge ears and gangly legs. The reason this is significant is because for the past two weeks or so our group has been in love with the new Ylvis song called "The Fox". We were hoping these desert foxes would give us a hint a to what the fox does in fact say, but they merely sat silently staring at us as we ooooohed and aaaaahed over them.
After we had our fill of fox, we hopped back into the jeeps and set off to find the fossil mines. These mines were basically holes where they dig for quartz etc....
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