Sahara, Part 2

After riding camels into the desert at sunset, we arrived at our auberge, had some mint tea and a Berber style dinner (which consisted of a communal plate of some kind of tagine that we all just used bread and our hands to eat), then listened to some rather sad attempt at music next to a camp fire and looked at the stars. Even though we had to get up early for our sunrise camel trek back to Merzouga, I opted to go with a couple of camel guides and other people to climb a big dune for the view. That sounded like a good idea at the time, but maybe not so much in reality...

About halfway up the dune, I remembered that my knee is bad. I told the guides that I wasn't going to be able to make it and that I'd just go back to the camp since I could still see the campfire. Instead, the guide wanted to take me to another tent where some Berber friends were living. So, I wound up wandering through the darkness in the desert with this camel guide to a Berber camp. We hung out for a bit while they talked in Berber (which I can't understand for the life of me), then walked back through the darkness to our auberge... During the walk back, the guy seriously started to get fresh with me - esp. considering this is a Muslim country. Unfortunately, there wasn't a lot to be done about it given that I was out in the middle of the desert and could no longer see our campfire. Long story made short, all worked out well (I tried to keep him talking about Moroccan-Algerian border relations...in Spanish); however, there was definitely some creep-factor in my Sahara experience.

After our sunrise camel trek, we had breakfast back in Merzouga and then dropped off half of the group at the taxi depot in Rissani. (Some people opted to catch a grand taxi from Rissani to Fes instead of taking the tour roundtrip to Marrakech.) We then pretty much halled balls to get back to Marrakech before midnight... When we drove through the high desert approaching the mountains, we got into a pretty decent-sized sandstorm that had the minivan buffeting around a bit. Then, once we could really see the High Atlas mountains, I could tell we were in for trouble...

Considerable snow had fallen in the mountains since we'd passed through two nights before. I could see snow blowing off the ridgeline, and recalled that they'd had to shut down the pass for several days before we got through. As we started ascending into the mountain pass area, we got stopped at the last little town. The police were out and we were told that they had, indeed, shut down the pass due to snow and ice. We sat stuck in the van for a couple of hours while some brave/poor souls finally made their way down the mountain behind a snowplow. It was hit-and-miss as to whether the pass would reopen - and I honestly didn't expect it to. (People at my hostel in Marrakech who'd been on the last tour before they'd previously closed the pass got stuck in the mountains overnight; I figured we were in for the same.) As luck would have it, though, they reopened the pass to let us through for the last trip of the night. It was pretty treacherous - and was certainly more snow than my Californian ass has seen in many years. Not only were those of us on the tour snapping pictures in amazement, but so was our driver; he snapped away with his cell phone camera and couldn't believe it. Eventually, we did make it back to Marrakech - but it was one hell of an adventure.

Ironically, in addition to traditional Gnaoua music, the song that most ingrained itself into my memory of my Sahara trip (from sheer frequency of radio play) turned out to be Akon's "Right Now". ;-)