Day 12 - Sahara Desert

Before we were picked up at 9am, we managed to squeeze a quick breakfast in, and also got caught up in an altercation with the hotel staff - last night the porter didn’t record that we paid our city tax and it took for me to whip out the trusty google translate to sort it.

With everything sorted, our driver for the next 4 days, Hassan, was waiting at reception and ready to go. We had booked a package with Luxury Desert Camp who were going to drive us to the Sahara Desert, a few other places of interest and sort all our accommodation for us until they return us to Marrakech.

In our black 4x4, we were treated like royalty. When I say that, what I really mean is that we had an abundance of water and the air-con was just perfect. However, Hassan did open and close the door for Anna - you wouldn’t get that on our CTM Morocco buses.

It is roughly an 8hr journey from Fes to our camp near Mazouga. On our travels though the middle atlas mountains, we passed through the ski town resorts and were told to imagine the areas covered in snow and lush green bushes. It was hard to imagine the deserted sandy lands comparable to the alps, but we did stop in Ifran, a town with a hotel called Le Chamonix - it must be true.

Along our journey, towns and villages got smaller and smaller, eventually being replaced with empty Moroccan landscapes with just donkeys, goats and the nomadic people going about their everyday lives. We did come across a couple of monkeys and had a go at feeding them peanuts. They liked Anna and the car more than me so I ended up having to just throw the peanuts on the ground for them later.

After a quick stop at a local café for lunch, we travelled through the farm lands, which turned to red dry rock, a hidden oasis in the Ziz valley gorge, plains of black volcanic rubble and eventually, bright orange sand of the desert.

We had arrived at our camp and were surprised that we were the only guests. Another 3 would be joining later, but for now, we had the run of the place. Right in the middle of the dunes of the Sahara, the silence just that. Silence. The two of us have never heard silence like it before - no flies, no cars, not even wind. Just silence. It was quite eery actually.

We settled into our glamping tent and immediately set out on the dunes to explore, and get some cool photos of course. Walking on sand dunes takes its toll on your stamina, but we were lucky to return to camp and jump straight into our own swimming pool. Mad wee place this altogether.

Our camp guides did everything from the cooking and cleaning to the entertaining and leading the activities, sometimes staying at the camp for up to 2 months! They were fantastic and we probably had our best food in Morocco here. Soup and bread followed by a concoction of potatoes - fried potato patties, potato, egg and cheese tagine, as well as vegetables, rice and some more aubergine and potato tagine before melon to finish. Delicious.

After sunset, the electric was turned on and our candle-lit camp was made brighter with more camp lights. The 3 new guests joined by the central campfire as we listened to our hosts sing and play drums. They even had us up dancing and playing drums too, before turning the camp to dark so we could gaze at the stars.

Although people say it gets cold at night, it was the same temperature as an Irish summer and so we were in our element. It was truly a magical place to be - the silence was back as we drifted off to sleep in the Sahara.