After a busy and intriguing two days in Fez, my mom and I signed up for a tour that included an overnight stay in the dunes of the Sahara Desert. The morning started with a scare that we had been ripped off, but our guide eventually showed up and we started our journey through Morocco by car.
Our first stop was in a smallish town in the mountains that looked like it could have been in Europe. Our guide said that it was a popular destination for locals because the climate is mild.
It was somewhat interesting, but I already had a memory card full of European looking buildings. I was in Morocco to see Morocco.
The land that we drove through kept getting more and more interesting. A problem that I'm going to have in this post is a problem that I'm going to have when I start posting about Vietnam. There are only so many ways to "the land looked cool". Trying to find ways to express how cool or interesting the geography is going to be a struggle for me.
We stopped at a forest with monkeys.
The monkeys are always hungry. The ones at this forest were fairly well behaved, but we were warned to keep an eye on our pockets and belongings. The monkeys will snatch up anything they can get their hands on.
I took lots of photos from the car as we were driving. The drive itself was fairly relaxed. Our guide was pretty easy going and friendly. He had some decent local music too.
The building style was pretty cool too. It's kind of a boxy fortress-like style.
The land had some incredible formations.
The sky was also pretty amazing.
These poor guys in the back of this truck did not look comfortable. It seems like a pretty rough way to get from one place to another.
It's hard to see in this photo, but the mosque has a stork nest on its tower. I first saw lots of stork nests in Poland and they intrigued me ever since. I didn't see many storks or cranes, but I did see a lot of their homes.
The weather started to kick up a little bit during the day. It would get progressively worse as we got closer and closer to the desert.
We stopped and took a photo of a red mud-brick town. The photo's GPS says it's located here.
Some parts of the land looked like a dragon had hatched underground and tore its way to the surface.
This river valley was pretty cool. Driving up to this area, the whole land looked dry and arid for miles and miles. Then we pulled up to a spot and down in this valley is a bright, vivid oasis of green stretching off into the distance.
As we approached the desert, a giant orange wall of sand came towards us.
I had never seen a sandstorm in person before. It was cool to see one up close.
The people in town didn't seem very concerned about the sandstorm.
The storm hit us right as we had to turn off the paved road and drive a few miles on a dirt road. A few times the visibility got extremely limited. Luckily our guide grew up in this area and knew exactly where to go.
The storm passed shortly after we arrived at our hotel. We would spend one night here, then the next night we would spend in the desert.
The hotel was pretty nice, but I seem to recall having ants in my bed. They were black ants and didn't bite, but I'm generally not a fan of ants in my bed.
The desert looked impressive and imposing.
I'm pretty sure the hotel put this table on the dune just for people to take photos of. There's probably a million photos online of this table and chairs.
We spent that night in the hotel and had some activities planned with our guide for most of the next day. The camel trip into the desert wouldn't start until later in the day.
I really enjoyed the long road trip through Morocco. It's such a stark and beautiful land. It's definitely a place where I wished that I had a better camera.
I hope you'll join me tomorrow as we explore the area next to the Sahara and journey into the desert.