After arriving at Casablanca and spending the 2 last days in Marrakech, a group of travellers and I decided to book a 2 day, 1 night trip to the Sahara desert. The shuttle bus picked us up from our hotel at the next day around noon on May 19, 2018. The ride to the desert is 2 days with an overnight stay along the way.
To reach the historical castle where parts of the movie “Gladiator” was filmed, we had to cross a small river stream using the sandbags as steps.
At our hostel, we were entertained by the host who were playing the Darbouka also called the Moroccan Drum.
After spending 2 days on the road, we finally arrived to our destination, Sahara Desert in Merzouga. There, we checked-in, got assigned our camel, and off we went into the desert riding for an hour to our campgrounds. Once we off loaded from the camels and put our packs in the tents, we went up the sand dunes. Some of us had carpets and used it like a toboggan sliding down from the top of the sand dunes.
At the top of the sand dunes, we indulge on the calmness of the desert, spelt our names on the sand and watching the sunset. Rain drops were felt when the sun went down, so we quickly ran back down to our campgrounds and into our tents.
The guides had prepared a feast for us. Tangines are one of the most common dishes as shown in the picture below.
The next morning at 5:30am, we were woken up before dawn by the guides. We packed up and hopped on our camels and headed back. Along the way, we were mesmorized by the sunrise, cloud and sand dune formation and our shadows seen from the sand.
Once back from where we started, we all went our own way as we had different travel plans, and I was going north to Chefchaouen, the blue city of Morocco.
