The Sahara

 We drove all day yesterday from Fes to the Saharan town of Merzouga. This is the home of the Tuareg tribe of Berber. This morning we woke up with the sun, to see it rise over the dunes.

We started our day visiting a Berber dance and musical group, who were great! It’s not possible to upload a video, but here’s a still.

The Berbers are semi nomadic now, and are made up of three main tribes. They used to migrate between several countries, but now that is more difficult. They would migrate between Morocco, Tunisia, Mali, Niger, Mauritania, and Algeria. Algeria is about 15 miles from us at the moment.

We had lunch in the town of Rissani. The lunch was the best food we’ve had in Spain or Morocco. It was a Berber style pizza or calzone called  Medfouna.

Our restaurant and blue man Berber waiter. The blue men are called that for obvious reasons.

We began our desert experience in the afternoon with a 4 wheel drive trip across the dunes to our tented camp, passing a Berber wedding party along the way. The trip was like the Indiana Jones ride at Disneyland. You better hold on. 

We had a sundown camel ride, which wasn’t quite the wilderness experience, but was very peaceful.

Sundown 

We stayed in a tented camp for the night, with pretty luxurious tents  I wasn’t expecting showers and bathrooms in the tent. We left our windows and door opened, and the temperature was lovely at night. After dinner, we were treated to a fire and music. 

There were many Berber villages scattered throughout the desert. We got up early before sunrise to watch the sun come up. There were camels all over in the desert, obviously belonging to people, although there weren’t any people nearby.

Sunrise 

After breakfast, we hopped back in the 4x4, and returned to the main road for our trip to the Atlas Mountains.