Sahara, Part 1

I left for a 2-day/3-nt tour to the desert at sunrise on Sunday morning. The group was about ~70% Spanish, so English wasn't the dominant language but it's all good. My travel buddy became a beautiful Spanish guy who was traveling with his friends as a "third wheel". There was some broken communication along the way (he spoke no real English, and my Spanish won't win any awards - esp. among Spaniards); however, I'm positive he offered to buy me for the price of a camel at some point along the way... ;-)

Back to the real story... We drove threw varied landscape that reminded me at times of New Mexico and, at times, Switzerland (not that I've been there). On our way out, we saw a lot of snow at high altitudes in the High Atlas Mtns; however, we made it through the switchback passes with no problem. After a little side trip to see Ait Benhaddou (the place where they filmed movies like Gladiator and The Mummy), we stopped for lunch in Ouarzazate and then continued on to the Dades Valley where we stayed the night at a little hotel at the base of a gorge, listened to some live Berber music and froze our butts off overnight. The next day, we drove to the Toudra Gorge, stopped off in a Touareg village (where I got hastled by a guy selling Berber carpets), and then continued on to the Sahara so that we arrived in time for a 2hr sunset camel ride to reach our auberge.

The Sahara is absolutely amazing. So peaceful, so beautiful. I saw more stars there than I've ever seen in my life - including a shooting star. I'm so glad I did this trip!

Did I mention I almost impaled myself on a rusty camel harness?? ...almost, but not quite. It ripped through the thigh of my heavy jeans but, thankfully, didn't get the skin.