sahara so we headed south, 
bypassed a particilarly persistant and unpleasant tout, stopped off in erfoud for a night and some fantastic cous cous and then headed further south towards the sahara. we grabbed a lift with a guy who just, by chance, happened to be headed to the same hotel that we wanted to stay in. flick was very unhappy that we got in the car with them. we spent the whole trip trying to workout how to get from the hotel we would inevitably end up at to the hotel we wanted to goto. but lo and behold the guy was telling the truth and he turned out to be the owner of the auberge la source a very nice, chilled, comfy place right next to the dunes. the next two days were heaps fun, it was very quiet and peaceful, in the mornings and early evenings we wandered round the dunes climbing some of the bigger ones to watch the sun rise and set. the changing colours of the dunes as the sunsets is pretty special, especially the rosey tinge they get as the light fades. from the top of the biggest dune you could see all the way to the algerian border, apparnetly the border between morocco and algeria is a black sand desert, but we didnt get that far in. between our hotel and the dunes was a beautiful palmerary, in which little tracks and irrigation canals wound between the small vegie^patxhes, all under the welcome shade of the big palms. we spent the second afternoon hanging out in there watching frogs. then trekked off into the desert. unfortunately the night was cloudy and so very dark, and we'd wandered much further into the dunes then the first night and so by the time we reached the palmerary. then we managed to get totally lost in the palmerary, suddenly there were all these barriers wed never noticed in the day. even though we could see the village lights just away in the distance it took us a couple of hours to scramble back to the hotel, exhausted.
bypassed a particilarly persistant and unpleasant tout, stopped off in erfoud for a night and some fantastic cous cous and then headed further south towards the sahara. we grabbed a lift with a guy who just, by chance, happened to be headed to the same hotel that we wanted to stay in. flick was very unhappy that we got in the car with them. we spent the whole trip trying to workout how to get from the hotel we would inevitably end up at to the hotel we wanted to goto. but lo and behold the guy was telling the truth and he turned out to be the owner of the auberge la source a very nice, chilled, comfy place right next to the dunes. the next two days were heaps fun, it was very quiet and peaceful, in the mornings and early evenings we wandered round the dunes climbing some of the bigger ones to watch the sun rise and set. the changing colours of the dunes as the sunsets is pretty special, especially the rosey tinge they get as the light fades. from the top of the biggest dune you could see all the way to the algerian border, apparnetly the border between morocco and algeria is a black sand desert, but we didnt get that far in. between our hotel and the dunes was a beautiful palmerary, in which little tracks and irrigation canals wound between the small vegie^patxhes, all under the welcome shade of the big palms. we spent the second afternoon hanging out in there watching frogs. then trekked off into the desert. unfortunately the night was cloudy and so very dark, and we'd wandered much further into the dunes then the first night and so by the time we reached the palmerary. then we managed to get totally lost in the palmerary, suddenly there were all these barriers wed never noticed in the day. even though we could see the village lights just away in the distance it took us a couple of hours to scramble back to the hotel, exhausted.in the evenings the berber guys at the hotel cranked out the tam tam drums and played some cool berber songs and we had a good old jam.
here is a little scarabi there tracks are everywhere but they only come out in the late afternoon when it cools down.
here is a little scarabi there tracks are everywhere but they only come out in the late afternoon when it cools down.
a couple of pics of us waiting for the sunset and below left is the dune we're lying on.
so out in the middle of the sahara (well it felt like the middle anyway) we came across a mute goat herder. he gestured and wrote 10 in the sand. we thought he wanted 10 dirham for no apparent reason and we thought wandering the sahara is a pretty hard life for an old man so we gave it too him. he seemed happy if a little surprised. he climbed a big dune with us and hung out for a while, whilst communicating in gestures. after a while i assertained the 10 hadnt referred to wanting ten dirham rather he was taking his goats (two fingers on his head like horns) to town (point at town in the distance) to have their throats cut (im sure you can imagine the gesture). for each he would recieve 70 dirham (about ten bucks) and the ten had referred to how many goats he had to slaughter. he wrote his grand total he expected from the expedition 700 dirham in the sand and grinned. then he waved and raced down the dune. heres one picture of flick meeting him and another of him heading down the dune, i wish we'd taken a close up of him he was a very interesting looking character.
No comments:
Post a Comment