Day 3 of Moroccan Vacation: Sahara Desert Tour Day 2 on February 7th, 2017

Second day of our three-day Sahara desert tour from Marrakech.

The plan of the day’s tour was to ride from our overnight stay near Gorges Dadés to Sahara Desert (the exact name should be Erg Chebbi Desert), the largest sand desert of Morocco located near the Eastern border of the country, next to Algeria, while visiting a farming village near Tinghir and nearby Gorges Todra.

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After breakfast, our caravan left at 0815. However, not long after we departed I found I left my beloved earplug cover in that 2-star overnight hotel inn, a portent of the day’s miseries.

Viewing Platform of Gorges Dadés

Our first stop of the day was a viewing point of Gorges Dadés with open panoramic views. (Judging by the pictures, I don’t think Gorges Dadés was open for hiking.) However, it was early in the morning and the sunlight weren’t much to our favor (because the rocks were to our East). So we didn’t stay long at that viewing point.

After that, it was an hour’s drive to the city of Tinghir.

An hour later we arrived at the city of Tinghir. A local tour guide greeted us and showed us the local farmland.

Farmland and Village of Tinghir

As told by our tour guide, the local farmland was irrigated with melt water from the surrounding Atlas Mountains. There wasn’t much water around, so the local people take turns to irrigate different lands by blocking these irrigation ditches with rocks. Also, so harvest leaves of palm trees in the field as cutters.

What’s more, as expected, these farmland got divided among sons as their parents passed away, so the farmland got smaller and smaller over the generations. The solution: some people abandoned farming and went to work in the factories.

After farmland, we visited the village of Tinghir, where our tour guide showed us the local building technique in a “construction yard”. As far as I’m concerned, it was clay, straw, branches, and maybe camel poop all mixed up and piled up, and hopefully it won’t fall down. Till these days, there were still people building houses with these old techniques in the village of Tinghir as we witnessed.

After that, we were invited to a local house (that also doubled as a carpet store), where we listened to host explaining the different patterns on the carpets (that we totally didn’t understand). All the carpets were hand-made, but unfortunately, seemed very much home-made.

After that, we went up Gorges Todra.

Todra Valley

Gorges Todra was a famous summer resort for the Moroccan people due to its high cliffs blocking sunlight and its cool creek running through. Our tour guide told us in the summer the nearby streets would be fully parked with cars.

After that, we reached a restaurant for lunch. As usual, the prices were typical packaged-tour ripoff.
And the meals were served ridiculously slow.

After that, it was a nearly five-hour drive to Erg Chebbi Desert.

Erg Chebbi Desert

There was a shortage of camels, so my friend and I were designated to a SUV rooftop. (Later I guessed an alternative explanation was that the tour agency showed us photos of both camels and SUVs, so probably both means of transportation would be employed getting us in and out of the desert.) While my friend and six other Scandinavian boys were more than excited for the roller-coaster rides, I was more concerned with my own safety than the thrilling rides. (But with hindsight, it’s definitely fun.)

Dinner was at 1930, so that gave us two an hour or so exploring the nearby sand dunes. However, climbing them was more difficult than it seemed, as one small step forward came with 0.99 small step backward as the sand drifted.

As expected, there was nothing more than carpets blankets in the tent. No light bulbs, so we navigated the whole tent with our cell phone flashlight.
I was glad that at least I was sleeping on a bed, not in a sleep bag.
And yes, there were bathrooms, they were everywhere.

I only brought with me a mini tripod, which meant I could only place my camera very close to the ground. So the following photos of stars might seemed a little bit strange.

After that it was bonfire party, of people from different nations singing their folk songs. It was all nice, except for the soot from bonfire drifting around choking people.

After the bonfire party, my friend and I decided to give another try to the sand dunes. It was only 80 meters in altitude difference, but it felt like 800 due to drifting sand. It took me four limbs and an hour to reach the top of the sand dune, and like 3 minutes to get back down.

When climbing that huge sand dune, as I heavily swayed my body from side to side, my camera accidentally fell out of my pocket. Since dust-seal was something non-existent on Canon’s G7X model (which users complained frequently about), sadly, some of the sands got into the lens. The end result was that the lens didn’t retract properly (but one can still got them back manually), and light sensing got faulty during daytime when incoming light was strong (which I didn’t know until next day evening). This broken camera solidered on to Barcelona, where became completely unusable.

Having toiled all the way up the sand dune, I only stayed up there like 15 minutes before the desert night became too cold for me. So I rushed down the hill, got back to the tent, and called it a day.

END

Day 3 of Moroccan Vacation: Sahara Desert Tour Day 2 on February 7th, 2017 by Huang's Site is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.