This is the first part of a six-part series on our camel trek in the Moroccan Sahara. The addi­tional entries will be posted each day over the next week. After that, you can see all six here.

May 13, 2010

As I write this we’re only about two hours into our great Sahara adven­ture and it’s already the high­light of our Morocco trip. We’re in the back of a grand taxi—one of Morocco’s inter­city shared taxis—speeding toward the small village of Tamegroute, where we will hope­fully meet our desert guide and hop into a 4WD to head into the dunes.

After scour­ing the over­priced tours avail­able in Marrakesh, we decided to simply head to the desert on our own in the hopes of arran­ging some­thing on the ground. That has proven to be a good decision.

In Marrakesh we found several travel agents, who prac­ticed varying-intensity ver­sions of the hard sell, most of which we found in dirty, hot offices. One of them seemed to offer an excel­lent service, but at some-9,000 Moroccan dirhams for four day/three nights, was way out of our budget. Nine thou­sand dirhams is equi­val­ent to about 900 Euros, or about $1,150 CDN. We hoped to spend less than half of this.

Anyone seeking a Sahara exper­i­ence in Morocco has to make one big decision: go to Erg Chigaga, near the village of M’Hamid, or head for Erg Chebbi, near Merzouga. Erg Chebbi is the common choice, and has a bit more tourist infra­struc­ture and more oper­at­ors, but tends to also be a bit more over run by vis­it­ors, which, accord­ing to The Book (Lonely Planet’s Morocco) can spoil the romantic des­ol­a­tion of the desert. As such, I was fairly set on making the slightly more dif­fi­cult voyage to Erg Chigaga in the south. Our plan was to take the bus from Marrakech across the Atlas Mountains to Ouarzazate (“War-za-zat”), through to Zagora, and then finally into M’Hamid, where we would spend the night, find a trek oper­ator, and head out into the desert.

The scenery on the long bus ride from Marrakesh to Zagora was unlike any­thing I’ve ever seen before, at times like the American desert in the Southwest, at others like pic­tures I’ve seen of the Nile river, but mostly wholly unique. No written descrip­tion can evoke the sense of awe we felt in cross­ing the harsh and rugged Tizi’n’test Pass, the road lit­er­ally perched atop a moun­tain ridge falling away for hun­dreds of meters on both sides. Words can’t capture the abject terror of peering down 1000-foot drops from the cramped seat of a swaying bus while the driver seemed more intent on beating his own pre­vi­ous record of passing on blind corners than in actu­ally ensur­ing his cargo arrives in one piece, or the wonder of the lush green palmeraie (palm grove) growing like a miracle along the length of the Draa River Valley.

About eight hours out of Marrakesh we dis­em­barked with relief in Zagora, rather than going the addi­tional hour and a half all the way to M’Hamid. The bus ride had been long, at times fright­en­ing, and very dif­fi­cult for Laura, who was suf­fer­ing from some car sick­ness, and we figured (cor­rectly) that there would be more options for acco­mod­a­tion and tours in the much-larger Zagora.

Zagora is a small, dusty city that ori­gin­ated as a launch­ing point on the desert caravan route across the Sahara, was of some import­ance as a French colo­nial outpost during the pro­tect­or­ate and now seems almost wholly ded­ic­ated to getting tour­ists into the desert. We were beset imme­di­ately by a friendly but per­sist­ent tour oper­ator named Younes, who insisted on walking us to our hotel and made a some­what heavy-handed effort at booking us on one of his desert excur­sions. We spent the night at a budget hotel, with plans to rise early to meet Younes and check out the other options in Zagora. After con­sid­er­a­tion and some pre­lim­in­ary bar­gain­ing, we politely declined, and even­tu­ally booked with a much more laid-back oper­ator named Mohammed, who not only beat every­one else we scoped out in price and friend­li­ness, but also offered to extend our plans by one day at no addi­tional cost.

For 4,000 dirham (about $500 CDN), we booked a 5-day/4-night camel trek, includ­ing a brief tour of the local palmeraie, as well as an old Jewish Kasbah where skilled artis­ans still create jewelry using the tech­niques of the long-gone Jewish res­id­ents. Mohammed walked us through these places this after­noon, explain­ing that many people, himself included, still call this 300-year-old fort­ress home. Tonight we sleep in a Berber tent in the desert, in order to be able to leave first thing in the morning on our trek. As we under­stand it, we will rise each morning with our guide, pack up camp, and mount the camels for a three or four hour ride (sup­ple­men­ted with some walking), before stop­ping for a long mid day break, and then doing a similar trek in the after­noon. Our goal is the great 300m dunes of Erg Chigaga, some 60 km into the desert from our base camp. After the crush of the tourist hordes in Marrakesh, we are actu­ally thank­ful that our plans don’t include air-conditioned coaches or loud tour groups.

So this is how we’ve come to find ourselves in the toasty and cramped back­seat of what has to be the sor­ri­est old station wagon I’ve ever been in. Our fellow pas­sen­gers are three Moroccan men, who along with the driver, have said exactly zero words since we left Zagora. Some Saharian music is blaring through the taxi’s tinny, burnt-out speak­ers, a mix between upbeat Middle eastern techno, African drums and call-and-response singing in what I assume is Arabic. We’re lucky to not be sharing the back­seat with two other pas­sen­gers, as it is not uncom­mon to fit six in a grand taxi. As it is, my legs are basic­ally in my own lap and Laura and I are hunched over to avoid hitting our heads on the low roof with each bump of a very bumpy road.

We are cur­rently ascend­ing one of the last passes over a rocky ridge of jebels before we enter the Sahara proper, and the feeling I have right now is one of the reasons I wanted to travel. It is an intox­ic­at­ing mix of anti­cip­a­tion, excite­ment and curi­os­ity, with an added sense of accom­plish­ment for decid­ing to come out to this remote place, and actu­ally doing it; getting past the touts, sales­men and shoddy oper­at­ors trying to snag as many dirhams from each tourist as pos­sible, and making it this far.

Of course, thou­sands of others have made this journey before us, but somehow that doesn’t matter one bit. All that matters is that in a couple more hours we’ll be away from everything, on the edge of the Sahara desert, with only the stars and the sand, and a guide who sup­posedly even speaks some English.

This is just one part of a six-part series on our camel trek in the Moroccan Sahara. To read the full story, please click here.