desert trip

We met up with our driver in the central square of Marrakech at 7:30 and embarked on our journey to the Sahara. We found the ride to be very scenic. Mike and Sarah slept about half of the ten hour drive (I got about an hour, but tried to stay awake as much as possible). The guy who drove us was kind of cool. His name was Unis (I think), and he grew up at our hotel. His father owned it, and now he runs it. He never had a single day of formal education yet spoke Berber, Arabic, French, English, Spanish, and German.
Once at our hotel we went swimming for a few minutes, and then were off to the sand dons via camels. It was incredible!!!! The sand was perfect, and stretched as far as we could see. There was no civilization, and our guides were winding us in and out of the valleys. Overall camels are a terrible way to travel due to the uncomfortable nature of their walking, but it was a fun experience. After the ride we set up in their camp site, and waited what seemed to be an eternity for them to serve us dinner (our first meal of the day at 9:30 pm). It was really delicious, probably the best meal I’ve had in a long time, but unfortunately there were no vegetarian options for Sara, o she had some soup instead.
After dinner we went to the largest sand done we could find and walked up. It was a spectacular view of the stars (way better than anything I had seen before). We then proceeded to roll down the hill, which was really fun, but overall not worth it because the sand damaged both Sarah and my cameras. Ooops!! When we got back we found the guides and the rest of the group sitting and singing traditional Berber songs. It was fine, but we were tiered and only stayed a moment before going to bed.
I had a spectacular night sleep under the stars, and found it to be really nice to sleep outside. However Sarah woke up vomiting and couldn’t sleep. So, we’ll see how she feels as we make our way from here.
The next day we elected to stay at the hotel in the desert and lounge round until they would take us at night to a bus a few cities away that will take us to Casablanca. There wasn’t much to do at the hotel, but we swam a little, played a rousing gme of sorry with one of the local boys, had lunch, and mostly napped. While it wasn’t an incredibly good use of our time Sarah was sick and we had no other options due to the erratic bus schedules in Morocco. Either way, we had a pleasant enough day, and are continuing to be burdened by the incredible heat (60 degrees Celsius!!!).