I always pictured the Sahara Desert much like it was probably always depicted for you, as a vast, open expanse, full of sand dunes and not a bit of life in sight. And in the midst of the monotony there would be a caravan of natives riding across it on camels on their way to no where that anyone knew about. Maybe there would even be a dead animal carcass or the bones of the remains of someone too stupid to brave the Sahara alone without any food or water.
As you can imagine, 5:30 AM rolled around sooner than anyone wanted it to. We dragged ourselves to breakfast before the sun had time to get up yet and sat down to a less than satisfying hard-boiled egg and croissant. Everyone kind of sat there in silence because of the fact that we were all too exhausted to get a word out of our mouths since that took too much brainpower than we could handle at that obscene hour.
As we headed out to our lucky number 13 bus we were all hoping and praying that our air condition was fixed like it was supposed to be since we had complained to the trip leader the day before. We got in, counted off and chanted and the driver started the bus…ahhhh! Air condition! We literally cheered as we felt the cool air streaming out of the overhead vents. With this bout of good luck we were all ready and excited to conquer the Sahara on camelback. A few hours passed and our excitement was still somewhere back in Marrakech along with our “fixed” air conditioning. We were all dripping with sweat and practically dying from heat exhaustion.
Our first stop was at a small shop where people got drinks, food, and used the restroom. Aside from the food and bathrooms there, they had a beautiful view of the Atlas Mountains that we had been driving through for the past few hours. I have come to love the mountains. So many mountain ranges look so different and it is simply mind boggling that it snows in the mountaintops of the Atlas Mountains in Africa. Who would’ve thought that Africa would get snow?? In fact, near Marrakech is very well known for their impeccable ski resorts available.
A couple more hours went by before we reached our second stop: lunch. For some reason, lucky number thirteen along with fourteen always seemed to be lagging behind the other buses…by about an hour. When we got to the restaurant we were eating at the rest of the students at our table told us that they had been waiting there for over an hour for us to get there. Unfortunately, the food had sat out and waited right there with them. Because of this and the fact that the appetizer platter was wilting, we sat there and waited for the meal. They brought out the main course: an assortment of meats and vegetables. At this point none of us cared whether we were eating chicken or camel and we engorged ourselves in protein goodness. All we were looking for was some substance. For dessert our waiters delivered some form of banana and apple soup. We all think it was supposed to be ice cream, but it melted. We still don’t know.
Lunch was a quick stop with everyone sprawled out on the couches exhausted and then we boarded our lovely bus again. A few hours of sweat, a thousand sharp turns, and kilometer after kilometer of beautiful mountains later our buses pulled over alongside of the road and stopped. I glanced around wondering why our bus was stopping in the middle of nowhere. I looked to the other side of the van to see about a hundred camels lying there. Here was our next form of transportation.
Aeriale and I saddled up on Bobo as she so quaintly named him and were off to our Nomad camp for the night. Our poor brown camel seemed so tired along with the rest of the camels hauling us and for some stupid reason they didn’t have enough camels for us so some people were stuck walking half the time. The Sahara was not as I pictured in the beginning passage. It was really incredibly windy so we had to shield our eyes from sand, there were mountains all around us, trees and bushes littered the ground, there were small mud huts along the way and I even saw a tumbleweed go by. A group of children stood outside their home to encounter the dumb American students walking on past their home and it made me sad. They were dirty living in a home that didn’t even have a roof and looking as though they hadn’t had a good meal in years.
Our camel ride was fortunately much shorter than we had anticipated it being since I had my fill of camel riding in Egypt. After about an hour of riding we made it to our campsite. A group of musicians greeted us with some authentic Moroccan music as we entered the camp. As soon as we got in we were told to stake out a tent before dinner. The camp was filled with pieces of cloth being held up by a large stick in the middle and being held down by ropes. We found a tent and laid our stuff down before we went back out to the main area where the musicians were performing and people were dancing. They pulled people up to dance with them as they went and we sat and clapped and waited for dinner.
The first course in our dining tent was another appetizer of a vegetable mixture in some sort of dressing. Seeing as we were all fearing for our stomachs and contracting traveler’s diarrhea no one dared touch the food. If I had not disliked pretty much every vegetable in the salad I would have at least tried it to be polite since these people were willing to cook us a meal. Out at the fire there was a group of the women cooking and showing people how to make pita bread on the fire and we got a taste of some fresh bread. It was amazing. It seems as though that is my main staple for this entire trip: Bread. The second course was what seemed like a pot roast with vegetables in it. I really enjoyed it and we all decided that we were at the point where we either had to eat or pass out from lack of nutrition.
After dinner was over we decided to go out and do some hardcore stargazing since we were in the middle of the desert. We walked over near the tents to escape the insanity of the music and dancing and the light and that is where we found it…that indescribable sight. It wasn’t quite up to the Mount Sinai standards that we had witnessed in Egypt, but it was darn close. The stars were as vibrant as ever. As we were standing there in awe, my friend Emily said, “What’s that cloudy stuff around the stars?” I looked up, puzzled, trying to understand what she was talking about and looked at her and said, “You mean the Milky Way?” She said, “Is that what it is? I’ve never seen that before!” Everyone else chimed in saying that they had never seen it before either and we proceeded to discuss the reason that we can see the galaxy that we exist in.
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