A Good Night's Rest.Or the Farthest Thing From It.

We went into our completely dark tent and pulled away the sheet covering our small cots hoping that we wouldn’t find any little creepy, crawly friends already having taken up camp in them.  Fortunately, no bugs or scorpions or other creatures had found their way to my bed yet.   I laid down ready for a good night’s sleep from the inanely exhausting day that I had just been through and found myself suffering from my random problem of not being able to go to sleep.  This time I believe it was due to the fact that I just didn’t feel comfortable sleeping in the middle of the Sahara Desert where little creatures were roaming around just waiting to jump into bed with me.  I laid there for a couple of hours not sleeping and all of a sudden I heard yelling.

 

A few tents away there was a group of drunken SASers in a frenzy.  This girl and a bunch of guys were all screaming at each other.  The guys were trying to get the drunken girl to leave their tent and they were screaming absurd things at each other and being obnoxious.  Eventually I heard the trip leaders, Professor and Mrs. Pearson talking in the tent beside us about how unnecessary the behavior of my fellow classmates was.  He got up and went over and told the group to shut up and go to bed in hushed tones that I didn’t hear.  I just assume he said something to that affect.  A little bit later after the rambunctious group settled down there was a girl on her phone talking way too loudly.  She kept saying about how she was lost in the middle of the effing Sahara Desert and had no idea where her tent was.  She literally was circling around our tent for hours not knowing where to go and telling her friend along with the rest of the camp about this lovely experience she was currently going through.  People started yelling at her to go to sleep and to shut up because she was disturbing everyone and she just yelled belligerently back and then proceeded to cuss and complain about them to her friend on the phone.  Professor Pearson again had to get up and go try and get her to go to bed but she assured him that she was fine and that she was going to her tent.  After she still continued to disturb the peace Mrs. Pearson got out of the tent and they tried to help her back to her tent.

 

Apparently she never made it to her tent and ended up sleeping in the middle of all of the tents with nothing but a rug.  Unfortunately, I barely slept a wink if at all.  I heard people stirring around 6 AM and decided to get up.  We were supposed to go up on the sand ridge to watch the sunrise, but I couldn’t get anyone to get up in time to go up and watch it with me so I watched it from the camp.  Everyone had equal feelings in the morning…we hated Abby (the girl who was keeping everyone up all night).  Apparently a group of the drunks had jumped on and destroyed a number of tents and threw a boulder into the tent of some of my friends.  That was the hype as we ate our breakfast in the morning.  Most people complained about it, but there were a few that had no idea what they were even talking about…lucky them.

 

That afternoon we were all ready for our big camel trek through the Sahara, but much to our dismay the camel trek was the ride to the camp and back.  We never saw the Sahara that I had pictured in my mind.  We loaded ourselves back onto the camels and headed back to our horrible bus.  The air worked significantly better in the bus this time and we didn’t all roast too awful near the beginning.  We drove along and made a couple of stops for food and bathrooms.  We wound our way back through the Atlas Mountains and got the chance to witness some of the most beautiful mountains I have ever seen.  I loved the pinks and reds and layers of the mountains and the overall beauty that they created in the distance.  We made our way through the turns of death and as we were driving along I noticed my nose was running in a way that was not like the runny nose I had been experiencing for the past few days.  I had a bloody nose for the second time that day.  I asked some people for tissues and got handed a roll of toilet paper.  Fortunately a few minutes later was our next stop.

 

I got out and walked around with an attractive piece of toilet paper hanging out of my nose as I looked around at the different products being sold.  I tried pulling out the toilet paper to see if it was almost done and disgustingly enough a huge blood clot poured into my hand and my nose began bleeding worse than before.  I kind of panicked and yelled for Aeriale to help me.  She looked at me and was instantly horrified by the sight of blood gushing out of my face and ran around like a chicken with her head cut off trying to help me.  I went back to the bathroom to find a sink and some toilet paper and anything to plug my nose up.  Stupidly, I forgot that we were in Morocco for a brief second and remembered that toilet paper really doesn’t exist in this country.  I stood over the sink for a little bit letting it drip and Lindsay walked out of the bathroom, took one look at me and said, “Ew!!!! Do you want this toilet paper?”  I took the roll and started stuffing my nose again.  Then Aeriale ran back with the medical kit that we had for the trip and all of my friends started shoving gauze and ointment at me to shove up my nose.  After a little while it stopped, but Paul told me that because I lost so much blood I’d need to drink copious amounts of water.  I took one look at him and tried to make myself not laugh.  Copious amounts of water? Does he realize that we’re in the middle of the desert right now? was all that ran through my mind.

 

Back on the bus I tried to lay back and rest since I had just lost an insane amount of blood.  The rest of the ride was just as long and hot as the rest of the trip had been, but eventually we found ourselves back in Marrakech pulling up to our now incredible looking hotel.  This time we had the pleasure to get into Emily and Lindsay’s room with the broken toilet, dirty floors, and blood stained bed sheets.  Needless to say, the toilet still didn’t flush and the floors were still dirty, but the bloodstains were at least gone.  I took a somewhat unsatisfying shower and got out still feeling pretty grimy.

 

We all met in the lobby around 8 to head to grab dinner.  We went to a little place that some others had recommended we go.  It was a pizza place.  Aeriale and I split a panini and a pizza.  None of us were trying to experience any more of the Moroccan food.  The pizza was pretty good while the panini left much to be desired.  After that we were all planning on going to the square and the souk to do some shopping.  The taxis would only hold 3 of us so Aeriale, Tim, and I hopped in one and went on our way.

 

As we walked up to the area we were greeted by a number of bright lights and smoke and commotion.  No, nothing was wrong, this is how it typically looks at night.  It was amazing and kind of overwhelming at the same time.  We winded our way through the crowds into the heart of the shops and started our shopping.  We eventually found Emily, Paul, Lindsay, and the rest of our crew and all worked hard to finish our shopping quickly since we were all incredibly exhausted.  After spending a couple of hours there and everything was closing we left and went to get a taxi.  Instead of a taxi though, we all pitched in and rode in a horse carriage on the way back.  It was refreshing and relaxing to ride through Marrakech at night and enjoy each others company in a less intense environment.  When we got back to the hotel I hit my pillow and was out in a second.