Erg Chebbi, Morocco

After a long overnight bus trip I arrived at the small town of Erfoud. I had breakfast at a cafe, and the owner arranged an overnight camel trip into the desert for me.

I wasn’t planning to come here, but decided to come here when I was in Marrakesh because I read in the guide book that there was a fossil museum here. It turned out that the whole area was full of fossils. Everywhere you turned there was a fossil shop. They are so common here that they use them like marble: making table tops, basins, lamps and other things out of them. If you think fossils are rare, you haven’t been to this part of the world.

The driver took me on a 4WD deep into the desert. Most of the area was flat rocky ground like this.

After about an hour we turned off the road.

After bumping along the dirt track for a while we came upon what looked like a fort in the desert.

Except that it wasn’t a real fort, but a hotel built on the edge of the sand dunes. There were actually several hotels like this built along the edge of the desert. Despite being in the Sahara, I did not escaped the tourist trail.

This is what most people think of as the Sahara: rolling sand dunes that strech out forever. Actually, this is only a small part of the Sahara, and most of it was more like the rocky land that we drove through to get here.

In the Sahara desert the environment was strange and beautiful. Here a blade of grass blowing in the wind scratches out a circular pattern in the sand around it.

Here a scarab beatle walks across the sand.

They put us on camels and led us out into the desert.

After an hour and a half, we arrived at a berber camp where we stayed the night.

The tent was made of hessian and was very thin. Overnight a few drops of rain fell straight through onto my face. Good thing it doesn’t rain much in the desert.

More circular patterns formed by grass blowing in the wind. Notice the patterns caused by the drops of rain from last night. So I wasn’t dreaming when I thought it was raining in the desert.

I now know why they are called the “ship of the desert”. It is because they rock all the time, just like a ship on the sea. Good thing I don’t get sea sick easily.

In the morning we ride back out. The Berber camp is another tourist spot, because there were many other groups camped there too. Here we see one of the other groups riding back. Later on, I looked on Google Earth and the camp can be clearly seen on it, so it must have been there for years.

The ride back. Finally, I’m mastering the art of taking photos from a moving camel.

From the the top of a dune, we can see where the sand dunes end and the rocky desert starts. It was good to have done the trip, but it wasn’t as exotic as I’d imagine it could have been. Next stop: breakfast, a shower, and on to Tangiers.