You will get sand EVERYWHERE

I went to the Sahara, which incidentally is both the name of the desert I visited and the Arabic word for desert. Before we left we were given a briefing by the school's Debbie Downer. The most memorable part of it was the phrase "You will get sand everywhere." Turns out this is true, when I finally made it back to Rabat I took my pants off and turned them upside down and found that I had brought a couple grams of the Sahara back with me.

They really liked the peanuts

It really was a great trip. We spent the first day driving to Midelt which is basically a city in the middle of no where about halfway between Rabat and the Algerian border. On out way we got to stop and, as the schedule so eloquently put it, "pet Monkeys!" I spent 5 diram (about 60 cents) on peanuts when we got there to feed the monkeys. I know that someone out there is probably thinking, "You shouldn't feed them, its not natural." All I have to say is, you're right. Its not natural, but I got to feed cute monkeys and in return they let me take some awesome pictures with them, so i really don't care that much about whether it was natural or not, because it was awesome.

Anna hanging out with her new friend

We spent the night in a really creepy hotel. There was an attached restaurant where we were served by a man who I am pretty sure is a vampire. He was pale (frighteningly so for a Moroccan)  and had exceptional manners, also he looked like he enjoyed the taste of blood.

On Saturday we drove the rest of the way to the desert. We had to switch to jeeps at one point because there wasn't really any roads across the desert. Our group was split between three jeeps and I'm pretty sure that we got the best driver. When we started off on roads he drove pretty conservatively, probably between 40-50 mph. When we hit the desert he sped up to about 75 mph and payed significantly less attention the where he was going.  At one point he was trying to fix his mp3 player and had both hands off the wheel and was looking in his lap while the car was speeding at about 65 mph through the desert. After he fixed the mp3 player he would spend about 5 seconds of every minute looking out the rear view mirror. At first this really confused everyone in the car until someone thought to ask if he was in a race with the other drivers. All he said was naam (Arabic for yes) and slightly nod his head before pressing on the accelerator harder. In case you are wondering, we won by a considerable margin.

When we finished with the jeeps we got on camels. What you have to know about camels is they are a once in a lifetime experience. As in you will do it once in your lifetime and never want to ride them again. They were fun for about 15 minutes and then just really, really uncomfortable. We started our camel trek right around sunset and got some pretty nice views before arriving at the camp about 2 hours later (2 hours is a long time to sit on a camel). It took the guides about 3 hours to make dinner. so we at at about 10 and then hiked to the top of a sand dune and looked that the stars until 2 in the morning. I finally went to sleep at about 3 and had to wake up at 5:15 for the 2 hour camel ride back to the jeeps.

Sunrise in the Sahara

Sunday was spent sitting in a minibus for about 10 hours during the ride back to Rabat. I sat next to a sick person for about 6 hours so inevitably I also got sick. That's not to say I blame Anna for my getting sick rather, I'm trying to use it as an excuse for my very late blog post.

Ben