South to the Desert!

Hello all! It's Melinda!

We traveled south to the Sahara desert, and spent two nights there. We experienced the full beauty of the sand dunes, taking walks over the dunes, some of us even rolling down them. As a group, we also had a camel ride, which, though a bit rainy at first, was extremely beautiful. We saw some very tall dunes, and climbed to their tops.

In addition to having rain in the supposedly driest place on earth, the hotel near our tent village (which we used for meals and to store some of our things) had a swimming pool! It was beautiful, surrounded by birds, and a bit surreal. The mixture of modernity and pure desert was astounding, and a bit boggling at times.

More activities besides sleeping in our camel-wool tents, playing in the dunes and in the pool, and making camel friends (mine is called Naa'la!) included our mechoui (roast lamb) dinner, followed by the professional storyteller. Though the storyteller didn't necessarily meet our expectations (rather than telling traditional Moroccan folktales, he went the route of serving as an oral historian, telling us facts about ancient life in the desert, and how the Berber people lived), he was still very entertaining and interesting to listen to.

The desert itself is windy, much like our home of Morris. The difference is that the wind here picks up the sand! If you don't want to have sand EVERYWHERE, I would not recommend going to the desert.

Yesterday, after leaving the desert, most of us spent a lot of time working on our first papers, that were due this morning. We traveled a lot today, seeing two different gorges, and stopping at a stand where a woman named Fatima sells many interesting items, from Berber scarves, to skeleton keys, to necklaces and daggers. After some souvenir shopping, we made our long trek to Ourzazate, where we are now.

The name "Ouzarzate" means "no problems" according to our guide, Ishmael. Ish (as we fondly call him) worked some magic tonight and got the hotel to give us a free dinner! This hotel also has a (warm!) pool, and music to dance to. We have a free night tonight to catch up on homework and enjoy the hotel and town, before leaving for our Riad in Marrakech tomorrow.