Sahara Desert Tour (Day 2)
Day 2
After a relaxing evening at Riad Tazawa, our journey started at 9:00 am with our usual driver with a couple of stops along the way to take great panoramic photos of the vast landscape .
One of the many towns we had a brief stop in was Tenghir, a town notable for the surprisingly dense and rich forest that splits though the middle of the town. Seeing such greenery in the middle of a desert was a unique thing to see and we hope the photos do it justice!
Todra Gorges
Another notable stop on our tour was of the Todra Gorges. The river in the gorge is the closest thing that the locals have to a beach. Many families were camped on the rocks on the water and were snacking, listening to music and playing in the shallow water. The road that hugs the water was full of tour buses, families and tourists with rental cars all trying to either park somewhere off to the side, or pass through the gorge. Our driver let us out of the car and said we can casually walk along the river and he would pick us up further along the path. We walked along and passed by thousands of people, musicians, small vendors, a parade and even a hotel that was built into the side of the stone wall. The lively atmosphere and easy-going mentality of the people passing through here was something we did not expect to see between two mountains in a desert.
Erg Chebbi
After a long drive, we finally arrived at our desert camp in Merzouga. As our desert guide appeared from the sand dunes with our camels, we were instructed to only bring water bottles and our cameras for the tour. Our driver would move our luggage into our tent at the camp.
Riding the camels was surprisingly easy, they were pretty chill animals and our desert guide had a good handle on them. We trotted along through the dunes and was exposed to such a unique environment that we’ve only seen in movies. Aside from some intense wind, experiencing the desert was a memorable event. There’s nothing else quite like it in the world and running to the top of a sand dune, taking in the vista and then riding the sand back down the dune was one of the best memories of the trip. Pro tip, despite some articles saying its ok to wear sandals in the sand, I don’t recommend it. The sand was boiling hot and you are better off wearing running shoes that are covered well. Running shoes also give you sturdier balance for riding the sand down the dunes which is a must do!
After taking some amazing photos and taking in the scenery, we got back on our trusty camels and headed to our camp for the evening.
The camp was a small oasis in the middle of the desert. Our “tent” was comparable to a hotel room and had running water and protected us well from the occasional gusts of wind and sand. The camp was run by a few young guys who were exceptionally friendly and prepared probably the heartiest meal we had in Morocco. We never would have though our dinner in a desert would have been one of the largest we would have.
Our Luxury Tent
After a very yummy dinner and the sun had set, our hosts had us sit around a fire in the desert and they played on the drums for us and sand some traditional songs under the stars. They invited us to play the drums with them after a few songs and had we been more musically inclined, it would have been a pretty rad desert jam session.
