Kasbah Le Touareg Merzouga

... of dress when we got further south in Morocco. He kept apologizing that his English was limited, but I thought he spoke it pretty well. A heck of a lot better than we speak Arabic! At our first gas station stop I pulled out my handy dandy Moroccan Arabic phrase book and dove into conversation with him. It was fun - he shared that he went to University and has a degree; he used to speak English but lost much of the ...

... So we wait around all day while the mechanic tried several different ways to jumpstart the car. Finally by about 4PM the chauffer tells us that we should look for another option to continue our trip.  The hotel helped arrange this, and we left by about 6PM in another taxi.  We were a little uneasy about leaving so late and driving in the dark, but our next stop was about 4 hours, and we were already a day behind from the snow and road closures. We arrived in Kalat M'Gouna ...

We headed further south today towards the desert, driving past mud hut villages and stopping at Erfoud/Arfoud for the market. Dad left Mum and I to fight through the crowds of people and haggle for our food, because he felt claustrophobic and couldn't cope. As we crawled along a bumpy dirt track towards Merzouga, we could see the Erg Chebbi sand dunes in the distance. We stopped at a faux Kasbah that has recently been built as a ...

... Waking up at sunrise, crawling up a huge dune, looking around and all you can see is sand, totally surreal. I highly recommend this experience to everyone. Even to a prissy city girl like me ☺ The silent drive back took us through every type of scenery you can imagine. Started in the desert, then through the old Kasbah towns, palmeries that are green, the atlas mountains with hilltop villages, the ...

... hour drive south to Merzouga led us through some beautiful country. We went through gorges, plains, high mountains, forest, and finally desert. Although we had been warned, we also experience the Moroccan police a few times. They stand on random roads and pull random cars over. Then the police tell you that they clocked you going a certain speed, even though you know you were going the speed limit, and there will be a fine involved ...

... we where going, i was guessing a camp in the dunes somewhere to sleep for the night, the element of not knowing what was going on only adding to the adventure. you see all the pictures of endless dunes and beautiful views but seeing the landscape change colour, all from the motion of the camels back and breathing in the mostly fresh and clean air, if it wasnt for the smelly camels which you ...

... and what a home!...We were the only tourists in this beautiful place (later joined by one lone, and slightly crazy, Japanese girl) and I swear it was heaven! This place is a beautiful palace of sorts, probably 30 rooms in all, long corridors beautifully decorated with Moroccan rugs, pillows and cushions. Our meals were served to us in a lovely dining room by a sultan-looking man who brought us hot tea and Tagine and bread as we sat on our cushions in front of ...

... the lunch came back to haunt Prashant, Kath and myself... Midelt is dry outpost south of the Atlas mountains, the whole town is a dry sandy colour, with green fields cutting their way into parts of the town and the Atlas mountains (over 3,000 metres high looming in on the horizon. Our reason for stopping in Midelt was to do a 4WD tour of the nearby atlas mountains which included having lunch with Berber nomads in their tents. At dinner Kath started to feel sick and ...

... We weren't sure if we needed a guide and were equally not sure if we wanted one of these guides. It was however about an hour and a half before sundown and we reluctantly decided to hire one. It was probably a good idea (for the first time traveler) as there are no signs and it is a 35 km journey across the piste to the outpost of Merzouga. Pistes by definition is "poor track", however, there is very little track so that getting lost in the desert could have ...