Here I sit - it’s 10 until 6pm, and I’m in my Bedouin-style tent, decorated in red and gold strips like the inside of a circus tent. We spent the majority of the day in the bus, driving out to the very edge of the Sahara desert, near the Algerian border. I say the edge of the Sahara because here you can see the dividing line, as the terrain drops the black rocks and turns (very suddenly) into golden dunes with the finest grains of sand I’ve ever personally held in my hand. That’s not to say we didn’t have any adventures at all; we wandered through a small town of Rissani and went through some literal alleyways and into another open air market; this time a bit more polished and permanent but still just as insanely chaotic. This is the region where Henna comes from, and we saw it in powdered form in giant bags, looking like matcha or powdered green tea. We’re about to ride on a camel; let you know how that goes once we’re done.
This morning, knowing that we would be pretty sedentary today and having woken up at 6am, I went for a 5k jog through the town we slept in last night. You might laugh but it was a really rewarding experience; first of all, for having the guts to just randomly strike out into the middle of nowhere - I literally had to turn the key in the hotel’s exterior door to let myself out and I was the only one around. And then secondly just the physicality of turning in that effort when I didn’t have to. It reminded me of the old me: the one that ran 6 marathons and a half ironman. I’d like to rediscover that person.
There’s a bird cooing outside my tent that sounds exactly like the ones outside my Grandma’s house when I was a kid. It’s weird how these literal cultural touchstones stick with you.
The other weird thing was coming all the way out here to the literal middle of nowhere only to find a bunch of other tourists are already here; there’s apparently a giant motocross or 4x4 race and it’s happening this week and so there are a ton of Europeans and other folks here racing motorbikes. Not that this makes it any less fun or interesting it’s just so crazy that you can come to the middle of nowhere and humans still want to be there.
Status Update: riding a camel is very cool. As is often the case with me, it took a while to get over my primal terror, but once I did, it got fun - even, dare I say, peaceful, on the way back especially. Riding in the quiet desert with the sun setting on our left was a very pleasant experience. The camel lurches heavily when you get on him, as he kneels his way into a standing position. Riding on a flat surface or on the uphill is perfectly fine and not very scary, but when he starts to go down a dune it is pretty terrifying. But you just have to lean back and not fight the motion and everything is fine. The craziest part to me about the camels is how incredibly docile they are. When we got to the dune where we wanted to watch the sunset, the camel leader just basically…left them at a random spot. Not tied down or anything - tied to each other, but not to anything else. And then we just…walked away. And we were gone for probably a good hour or so, while we played around, watched the sunset, and took pictures. And the camels just…sat there. I asked Abdul how long they would have simply sat there, but he didn’t understand the question. They’re very peaceful creatures, really. Big suckers, and occasionally a bit stinky, but super peaceful. The ancient people must not have believed their luck: an animal that will just let us ride around on their backs, and just sit wherever they’re put. Compared to riding a horse, camels move much slower and are easier to ride, in my opinion.
Then we had a nice meal and listened to some drumming around an open fire. It felt like a weird combination of my bike rides, burning man, and camping in Yosemite. Plus a camel.
Tomorrow we get up early for a sunrise. I may do a mile in the sand, a throwback to my Florida days. Then we head out for another long drive. The only thing I would change about this trip is all the time in the van, but hey, that’s how it works when your country is as big as Morocco.
