The tent wasn't that bad comfort wise, but it got really nippy late at night. Sleeping, and earlier on, wandering around and sitting by the fire, I was really glad for my purple cloak. Who knew it would wind up being a practical purchase? The berber guides really liked it - apparently nomads use cloaks like mine, and I was even asked where I bought it.
I particularly liked my cloak when we were outside watching for shooting stars. The biggest one we saw was during the campfire portion of the evening, where we also tried out drumming on tam-tams.we stayed up or awhile waiting for one just as big, before giving in and going to bed. There were lots of little ones though. Given how unlikely sleep was going to be, I considered watching the Prince of Persia on my iPod touch, but decided it would ruin the mood - the desert us so dark, quiet and still at night. Besides, I should probably save it for the plane. I kinda want to find out if it was filmed in that part of the desert - the guide mentioned that most recently, the Erg Chebbi dunes were featured in the second Sex and the City movie.
There were something like 12 people in various tents around the site, all either staying in the same hotel, or as in our case going there for the first time in the morning for showers and breakfast. The Berber guides speak decent English and French in addition to Arabic and their own Berber dialect. But they speak bits and pieces of several other languages, all learned from meeting tourists. We taught some of them a little bit of Portuguese.
Anyways, as I mentioned before we left our tent while it was still dark, leaving the camp for the camel parking lot. Riding the camel was much easier this time around, helped a bit I think by the fact that as the sky lightened there was much much more to see. About partway through, we got off our camels to climb a sand dune and properly watch the sunrise over the desert. Climbing dunes is surprisingly hard. I'm glad I had the tough little camera that already survived snorkelling and falling down waterfalls, since sand got everywhere. Esoecially in my shoes - I have a little baggy of saharan sand I shook out of them that's coming home with me. The shockproffness also came in handy when I dropped the camera off the back of the camel.
Oh, and I forgot to mention that the region we were in is also known for it's fossils. We stopped by a workshop yesterday - apparently the nearby mountains mark the edge of an ancient sea. I think the same mountain range as the Ziz valley we drove past yesterday. I don't know if I mentioned that yesterday - it's really beautiful. You're driving through mountains and plateaus and it looks like there's nothing but rocks. Until you step to the edge if a canyon and see a valley completely filled with palm trees.
At the moment we are heading to see some the Dades gorge, which is near where well be staying tonight, as well as some other gorge whose name I forget, also part of the same mountain range - or connected to it anyways. We stopped to visit a village inhabited by people from further south in Africa, who has originally been brought to Morocco as slaves, where we saw a performance if traditional Berber music, and also to pick up some Berber handicrafts - mainly from the Touareg people, known for wearing all blue. Among other things, I picked up a scarf dyed with natural indigo.
I think we have a late lunch coming up soon. We shop super slow (atleast mom and I do, exacerbated by the slower pace here, and the bargaining process which always involves overly sweetened tea, sometimes with fresh mint leaves), so I think we might be running late. Hopefully nothing ends up cut from our itinerary.
I really hope our hotel tonight has a spa. The soreness is really starting to settle in. No idea what I did to my arms - maybe the stiff armed jolting when the camels go up and down? Not sure if I understood the instructions there correctly, but I did well enough since I didn't fall off. Ooo, or if there's arleast a hot tub, in addition to the pool I know they have. Which better not be closed - like when I visited Vegas last year and all the pools were closed since it was 'winter' and 16 degrees outside. The car tells me that it's currently 19 right now, which is a perfectly acceptable temperature to go swimming.
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