Auberge Tombouctou Merzouga

... especially down hill, a lot worse for blokes ! Personally I can really see why horses are so popular!<br><br>We drove back towards Marrakech, This time through the Draa Valley. Here there are acres and acres and acres of date palms, pretty amazing to behold.<br><br>We stayed the night at Zagora in a great French colonial hotel, which had that added ingredient that we had all been looking for, A BAR Yippee. So of course we all went to bed early NOT.<br><br ...

... Essaouria) Wonderful Moroccan dinner, tea, etc. out amid the Berber camp; the lads played drums for us, and then Dominick and I slept under the stars (on comfy mats) til we awoke to see the sunrise at dawn. Utter silence. The sky, a sea of sparkling splendor.<br><br>O.k. now, gotta git. Will just peck a couple of holder-entries before I close, so you can at least see the map of where I've been.<br><br>Enshala,<br><br>Dyanne

... in the Berber tents. I'm so glad I chose to do that - it's a once in a lifetime kind of thing and it was warm enough. I pulled a mat out of the tent, found a spot on the sand and settled in under a blanket (that had been used as cushion on the camels!). The guys were still drumming when I went to bed, so I listened to them while looking at the stars. I could see the big and little dipper (once someone pointed them out ...

... lollies as quick as lightning and Merete made all the kids line up and recieve their piece whilst the store owner checked all of their pockets to see who had already taken one. Then the whole entourage followed us down to Hassans restaurant and waited around. We tried the Kahlia de Maison tajine whilst Hassan tested us on our Arabic language skills in a competition in which the winner takes home one of his fish fossils from his store out the back. Hassan claims to be ...

... first arrived and the guides taught us how to wrap our scarves around our heads and faces to block out the sand. I felt so Arab! I asked one of the guides what my camels name was and he said my camel did not have a name! So I named my camel Mufasa, he was very good to me. We rode two hours on our camels into the desert as the sun was setting. There is not a bush, a town, or a person in sight. Just gorgeous glowing red sand. It ...

... pour nourrir sa famille ; les 6 petits gamins de 7 à 10 ans qui gardaient leurs chevres tout en ayant leur boulette de H juste au cas où ils renontraient un touriste interessé. Cette économie, pourtant interdite, est omniprésente et fait survivre une région entière, ce qui a suscité chez moi de nombreuses interrogations que j'espère pouvoir étudier avec bakapi prochainement. Malheureusement des petits malins ont volé mon nom de domaine bakapi.org ...

... down the dune to total silence. This was an incredible experience that I would recommend wholeheartedly to everyone. I have done something similar in 4WDs across the Arabian desert outside Dubai with my old work. This is where my obsession with photographing sand dunes began - but being on camel-back really added to the experience. We finally reached our camp in a valley out of harms way; buffered from the blasting sand and wind and were instructed to ascend one ...

... onto the first of our desert pistes... 3km of gravel hardened sand that lead us to a collection of 30 mud huts bacing onto a genuine desert oasis. This is the stuff of dreams and movies, and as we sip our welcoming mint teas and stare off into the mountains of sand in front of us, we can't believe the day we have had. From ancient medina, to garden cities; to barren lands; to mountains and now to the desert. Morocco continues to boggle our minds and dazzle our senses.

... trodding over the red sands to the campsite. We climb the largest dune, which is really hard. Climbing uphill in sand is not easy. We get to te top just in time to watch the sun duck beheath the horizon. Dinner is set around 9 with a large plate of beef tagine and melon. We lay around under the stars, watching the full moon rise from behind another dune. We play drums and talk until late, then we all sleep in the sand.

... relegated together in one van, but we've been trying to change that a bit so we get to know the others on the tour. En route we stopped to see the Barbary Apes which are actually not apes but monkeys. We could see frost on the nearby hillsides and, even though there was enough snow for a snowball fight, we are glad the weather is now sunny and clear after the torrential downpour that we experienced on Day 2 of the tour! We had lunch in a restaurant in a riad, a walled compound ...