Camel trekking in merzuga

Camel trekking in merzuga

From Fez we headed south to Merzouga. Already in Morocco, we had booked a seat on a camel caravan leaving Merzouga for the Berber camp in the Sahara at 3 p.m. One problem – between Fez and Merzouga is almost 500 kilometers, therefore, according to our calculations, adjusted for a possible force majeure, we had to leave at four in the morning to catch it.

Thus, we ventured a night drive through the Atlas Mountains and the desert that lies behind them. At night, the roads of Morocco can be even easier to drive than during the day: the traffic becomes much easier during the dark hours, the number of horse-drawn vehicles on the roads decreases dramatically, and the number of pedestrians walking smoothly along the roadway also decreases. And it’s actually very cool to drive along a lost highway in the desert at night – just you, the road, and the roar of the engine.

We met the sunrise climbing a narrow serpentine road into the mountains. The terrain around us was beginning to resemble the Martian landscape, the stony desert glowing scarlet in the rising sun. Beyond the pass on the road began to meet small villages whose architecture was somewhat different from the Arabian on the other side of the mountains – mud-brick xars and other Berber buildings made of adobe. On the roads we began to see signs duplicated in Berber, a very interesting script unlike anything we had seen before.

The road to Merzouga passes by picturesque oases in the lowlands, contrasting with the desert Saharan landscape. By noon, when the sun had risen, we had reached our destination, the inn. A squat one-story building in the middle of the heath, made of clay mixed with straw, sheltered us safely from the sun.

Not far from Merzuga are the orange sand dunes of Erg Shabby, the main attraction of those places.

Not far from Merzuga are the orange sand dunes of Erg Shabby, the main attraction of those places.

We went to the erg on camelback. It is about an hour and a half’s camel ride to the Berber camp, where they take tourists who want to meet the sunrise and sunset in the desert.

The most striking impression of the Sahara is silence. The desert seems to be a completely alien place from a parallel reality, it is deceptive and misleading – it is very difficult to visually measure distances to objects, their size – for example, a dune seems low, just until you see small figures of people climbing on it…

After sunset, the caravan arrives at the camp. Of course, don’t get your hopes up about spending the night in a Berber camp – it’s nothing more than a tourist attraction. You will be brought to the camp, allocated a tent with an old bed (I wonder if they dragged them on camels or a pickup truck?), fed with chowder, and then singing songs by the fire and beating drums. How authentic is this experience? I don’t think so. That said, of course, everything looks very atmospheric – bivouac, fire, colorful Berbers in national dress under the starry sky in the middle of the dunes.

On the other hand, what else is a caravan driver to do in the modern world? Except to deliver illegal cargoes through desert paths unknown to others. Maybe some Berbers are really smuggling goods across the African continent, as they did a long time ago.

At night, before you go to sleep, it is definitely worth it to get away from the camp and have a good look at the stars shining brightly in the sky over the desert in the silence and darkness, and in the morning get up early to meet the sunrise in the desert. It’s definitely worth it to see how the desert changes and colors brighten as the sun rises!

The only thing is that the way back to Merzuga is not as brisk as in the other direction: the saddle without the stirrups causes wild discomfort to the unadapted and beaten up butt for the previous day, and you manage to get tired again in an hour and a half of the way back. You don’t have to ride a camel in the desert, there is an opportunity to rent both a quad bike and a motorcycle in Merzug, but it’s not so authentic.

Below is a video from this part of our trip.

Sahara, Morocco: Dawn in the Desert

The world’s most well-known desert is the Sahara.. In Morocco you can go to the Sahara and meet the sunrise in the desert. This is the third part of the video from the Morocco Road Trip. From Fez we headed south to Merzouga. In order to catch the caravan leaving for the Sahara at 3 pm, we dared to make the almost 500-kilometer overnight trip through the mountains and the desert. Not far from Merzouga, about an hour and a half’s camel ride away, are the orange sand dunes of Erga Shebby, where we headed on camelback. This is where the Berber camp takes tourists who want to meet the sunrise and sunset in the desert. At night before going to bed it was definitely worth it to get away from the camp to see the stars shining brightly in the sky over the desert in the silence and darkness, and in the morning to get up early to meet the sunrise in the desert. It’s worth it!