Sahara Desert

The dunes! We had made it to that dream image that most people have in mind when they think of Morocco. We were touching the Sahara!

Hicham had outdone himself in choosing an incredibly beautiful tent hotel in a small village called Zaid.

This is a village of former slaves who found freedom and set up their own community in the Sahara. We were treated to an amazing dinner and a shisha pipe first with apple tobacco before food and then followed by mint flavour for desert. Delicious! Ben got impromptu tam-tam lessons as a drum session got going after dinner in one of the comfy mud brick buildings.

The next morning we went over to the community music hall to watch the Pigeons de Sable group play traditional Ganawa music. An amazing sound and rhythm, very fun to dance to.

Ben tried his best to impress, but his guitar skills may have been lost in translation as he wailed away on the 2-stringed Hejuj.

Rissani itself is a beautiful town filled with over 200 different Kasbahs where people live in community within the walls. It had a historic place on the caravan trading route and the current king comes from the area. Hicham arranged a great guide for us along with entry to a huge Ksar (palace) belonging to a former sultan who’s family was restoring the structure. Amazing to learn the history of the area and to see what can be built with mud!

Of course no visit is complete without a stop at a carpet seller. Friendly Aziz impressed us with the quality of his wares even showing Patricia his famed flying carpet that took her up into the air after a few magic words! It turns out that flying carpets were over our budget. Who knew?

As our stomachs began to growl, Hicham arranged a special surprise for us: Berber pizza! A secret blend of spices with onions, olives, meat and eggs, the pizza is baked in the oven for more than an hour inside of a fresh bread shell. Moroccan food continues to surprise and delight.








That night, our real taste of the Sahara was about to begin. We took a short 4x4 ride into our hotel beside the enormous dunes and got suited up for a sunset camel ride. Our intrepid tour operator surprised us yet again with beautiful scarves used by the desert people for protection from sun and wind. They really completed the effect! Ben was atop the smiling Jimi Hendrix, while Patricia chilled out aboard Bob Marley.

The dunes around us lit up in shades of yellow and deep orange in the setting sun.

After watching the sunset from a seat in the dunes, we made our way to a tent encampment where we had a nice tagine dinner and sat around the fire at night to swap stories. Like many Moroccans we had met, the camel guides were very witty and intelligent with many of them speaking five or more languages. We now know three Moroccan camel jokes! We’ll leave you with one at the end of the post and look forward to hearing your guesses in the comment section.

Soon everyone was off to bed so the two of us took advantage to head out into the sand. As we lay on a blanket in the dunes contemplating life under a canopy of stars, we received a subtle sign in a photo Ben took. Our nervous laughter broke through the silent Sahara night…

After tenting in the dunes we returned by ever-smiling camel express to our beautiful dune hotel. There we spent the day relaxing in the sun, napping in the fantastic beds and couches and enjoying the company of our desert guides.

That night we joined an Arabic dance party around a bonfire under stars complete with a live band, where again Patricia was pulled in by a Moroccan girl to learn how to dance the Arabic way. Here she is shaking her hips with the best of them!

Our time in the desert was something truly amazing and really impossible to put into words. We will never forget the place and the people.

Moroccan Camel joke:
How do you get a camel into a refrigerator in three moves?

(Hint: You must think like a Moroccan)