Thursday 19 October 2017

After a bad night, we opt for nothing to eat or drink before heading off to the desert. Jillali collects us at 9am. Today we are bound for the Sahara Desert. I am feeling ok but Cherrie is apprehensive about her stomach. The luggage will stay at the hotel and we’ll collect it later, Jillali tells us. We are coming back here before going to the desert. We have already decanted our desert garb into just one small bag, the cases to stay in the hearse overnight. The hotel does not accept our luggage so it goes into the hearse immediately. Just as well, for we don’t come back here at all.  Apparently we never were going to meet the 4WD here!

Our first stop is at a fossil place. This is fossil country, harvested from the mountains nearby, with huge machinery cutting great slabs of these ancient rocks. This is surely an environmental disaster? The fossils are amazing, and are sold as bench tops, basins, tables, any number of things.

We continue south to Rissani, home to more centuries old palm groves, and a mausoleum, which we could really do without but which Jillali is keen to show us in his new found role as tour guide. He is extremely proud of the mosque, which of course we are forbidden to enter, but he nearly weeps as he tells us this is where his god lives. His faith is a sense of great pride and is quite touching. He prays five times a day he tells us, but we have not witnessed this at all. His prayers are private and obviously only when he can fit them in around our itinerary.

Our guide around the mausoleum is a Berber. We are in true Berber country here, and he wears traditional camel hair sandals.

We move onto Rissani. It’s still only 10.30am and Jillali is struggling with what to do with us. We would be happy to just keep moving, but he wants to fulfill his role as tour guide and so we follow him through the busy Thursday souk, offering all sorts of goods, from the traditional stuff you expect

to traditional satellite dishes

 

And the food, which for good reason, we find offal

Turkey anyone?

The women in this area wear black and many of them are in the full burqua. We haven’t seen much of this elsewhere. We are in a truly traditional part of the country and it is obvious from both the dress and the demeanour of the Berbers.

After the souk Jillali takes us on a date. A double date. After all, it’s date season here and the speed dating market is hopping.

And then to lunch! Despite our protestations. He has organised this in advance and we really don’t want to disappoint him. It’s only midday. An outrageously early time to eat lunch in this country, but he’s run out of things to do with us. We follow him down an alley and into a restaurant. Which is closed. But not to be deterred, he calls out and someone appears and turns the lights on. We are shown into a private dining room and seated at a table. And left there. For an hour. Jillali is heard in another room talking to his friends, and we are sitting at this table where we don’t want to be, awaiting some special food we don’t want to eat. We have told Jillali repeatedly “un pur”. Eventually, at 1pm, a huge salad arrives, which frankly looks very unappetising. We order a bottle of water and reject the salad. The proprietor runs from the room in a panic and shortly after our translator, Jillali, runs in. “Something wrong?” he asks. “No, we just don’t want to eat much and if we eat the salad we will not be able to eat your special meal”. So, salad is removed. Another half hour of waiting and eventually the surprise arrives. A Berber pizza. Yum, just what we are craving. Not. It’s not dissimilar to the Bedouin pizza we made at our cooking class in Petra. Essentially spiced beef inserted inside flat bread and oven baked. This is not what we feel like eating. Fortunately, after our pseudo-delighted first taste, Jillali leaves us to go and pray. Our prayers are answered by a packet of tissues into which 50% of the meal is placed, and in turn that goes into my backpack. We think that leaving the other half of the lunch is not impolite, besides not enough tissues and not enough room in the backpack.

Jillali returns, we confirm how deliciously delightful this surprise lunch was, and we pay an exorbitant bill, which of course includes the salad. And the water.

We proceed to a rendezvous point for a 4WD which is to take us into the desert. Except we don’t really know this. Jillali dispenses us at a table for two outside a cafe and drives off. Where are we? What are we to do? We trust our driver, we know he is responsible, his communication skills are lacking, that’s all. I take advantage of his absence to find a bin to dump the lunch. We seem to have spent much of today waiting. Eventually he returns, a Toyota Prada behind him, and we are baled into the Prada with our overnight bag and one bottle of the wine we bought a couple of days prior. Jillali joins us in the car, having parked the hearse behind the cafe. Hasaan, a Berber (how good looking these young Berber men are, delightfully polite and attentive) drives the three of us to the desert. First over sealed roads, and then over sand dunes. We arrive at our tented camp, and struggle to get down the steep dune. It’s a test on the legs, even Cherrie’s.

We are surprised to find that Jillali has the tent next to ours. I guess he has earned this relevant luxury because he has done his best to look after us since we arranged for the premature axing of Obi.

It’s about 5pm when we arrive at camp and at 6pm we are to take a camel ride to view the sunset over the Sahara.

Getting up the dune is a test like no other. It takes two strong, and very charming, Berbers to get me up.

Omar is our cameleer and what a sweet young man. We guess about 16.  I’ve drawn a map of the world, an abbreviated one, to try to show Omar where Australia is. He could be forgiven for thinking we live on Mars.

Sunset in the Sahara is quite something. The dunes magnificent, the atmosphere peaceful, until a large group of Chinese atop camels ride by screaming as if a desert fox has embedded its teeth where teeth should never be.  Many other groups of tourists on camels are better behaved and there are plenty of sand dunes between us all.  The peace is once again broken by a dune bashing Toyota – oh what a feeling that is.

But, it is a wonderful experience and we know how privileged we are to be here, looking at the mountain range which is the Algerian border.

We even like our camels, albeit their halitosis.

Back to camp an hour or so later,

 

arrangements made with Omar for a sunrise pick up, and a drink of that lovely Bordeaux we bought by the fire before retiring to the dinner tent for quite the best meal we have yet had in Morocco. Avocado salad, lamb tagine, fresh fruit. Yummo, and tummies feeling better. Only two other guests in camp who we meet at dinner. Lois and Gerry are New Yorkers who own a real estate business in Brooklyn and a second apartment in Jerusalem, which they go to several times a year. They were in Morocco last year and loved it so much they are back, with their same guide. Lucky them – their guide is fluent in English!

And so to bed.  In a tent.  In the Sahara.  Que Sera Sera