Camping In The Sahara
Our wake up call was at 7am to begin our trek down into the Sahara, where we would be staying for two nights. We drove up and over the Atlas Mountains, which had very small, curvy that I am still surprised our bus made it up. The landscape was pretty amazing, the only buildings you could see for miles was maybe one small shack that had been abandoned on the side of the road. After about 5 hours we stopped for lunch in this oasis of trees in the valley of the dessert. It was a beautiful little hotel that graciously let us take over their dining room. From there it was about another 6 hours until we got to Merzouga where we would switch to jeeps with men who somehow knew how to find our campsite in the middle of the desert at night. Once finally arriving to our campsite after a very long day of traveling, we were able to put our stuff down and explore a little bit. The campsite was set up was a small little community of tents made out of blankets that were basically all connected. But they provided a mattress pad and warm blankets which was more than I expected. It was strange walking around the campsite at night though because we could see maybe one or two dunes right next to the tents, but then it was just complete darkness. Dinner was served at about 9pm with similar food that we had been having all week, still delicious. But by this time it was starting to become apparent that a few kids were really starting to feel sick. We are not exactly sure what the culprit was that started this epidemic, but it seemed to be just a mixture of strange food and strange water that our bodies could not handle. I was still feeling good at this point in the trip, so after dinner me and a few girls went and laid down on the closest dune to look at the stars. Nothing will ever compare the night sky in the Sahara desert. The milky way way so clear and vibrant and we saw about 10 shooting starts in the span of an hour. Nothing has ever made me feel more important and insignificant at the same time as staring up into that sky.
The next morning is when things really started to take a turn for the worst for me. Everyone at the camp was planning on waking up to watch the sunrise over the dunes, but I was rudely awoken by some serious stomach pains at about 430am. All these years I thought I had been building up my immune system to be invincible, but there is no such thing as invincible in the Sahara. I will spare you all the horrible details, but lets just say I was going back and forth from the bathroom for about an hour until everyone else woke up. I was very determined to not miss anything on this trip so I sucked it up and followed my two friends and a man who we thought was a guide at the camp, but turned out to be just a random man from the desert trying to sell us things, out into the dunes. Unfortunately it was a pretty cloudy sunrise, but sitting there and only seeing these amazing sand dunes for miles was incredible. Every now and a few people on camels would pass by, and all I could think was where did you just come from? And how do you know where you are going?
After the sunrise, I went to try and find our program directors to get some medicine from them but I quickly learned that they had spent the night in a hotel and failed to mention this fact to any of us. So I waited a horrible 2 hours until they showed up and could give me medicine that would help my stomach. Then it was time for the camel ride. I was feeling a little shaky but again I was not going to miss out on anything, so I grabed a giant water bottle and got on that camel. We rode for about 30 minutes before stopping at what they call The Big Dune. In the state I was in this dune looked like Mount Everest with a completely vertical incline, but they told us to climb it so I did! (I probably should have stopped listening to my program directors by now, but hey when in Morocco right?) That hike sucked out all of the remaining energy and hydration I had left, so when I got back on my camel I seeing black spots and thought I was going to pass out. But somehow I held onto old Betty (that is what I named my camel, later found out they were all males) and made it another twenty minutes to where they dropped us off at the hotel our directors had been staying at to go swimming in the pool. At this point it was apparent that about 70% of the Barcelona group was very ill, so you know what our directors decided to do? They had us all walk for about 25 minutes back through the desert to our camp. I'm surprised no one died.
There were a few other ISA groups on this trip from Madrid, Valencia, and Salamanca and all of their directors had told them weeks in advance ways to prevent getting sick in Morocco and what medicine to bring in case you did get sick. Our program sent out an email saying all of this the night before we left, making it pretty much impossible for us to be prepared. But its fine, I'm not bitter about it or anything.
That night I was completely exhausted from the day, so I just fell asleep before dinner and did not budge until the next morning. After this day we basically began our two day trip back to Barcelona stopping in Meknes one night and Sevilla the last. I will not go into detail about these two days because really the only exciting things that happened were more people getting sick. Despite all of the ups and downs of this trip, I am very glad that I went to Morocco. It really opened my eyes to a part of the world that I had never known before and forced me to bond with many people in my program that I did not know before going. Here are the pictures from the last few days:
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