Peace Corps Journals

1144 days ago

Dear Readers,

Steam was rising off the stones that pave the Djemaa as they warmed in the early morning sun. We cupped our hands and blew into them, regretting having not checked the weather to learn that Morocco is actually cold in the winter months. We watched the first of the vendors getting set up for the day, groggily rolling in their carts and wares. A few drivers were still sleeping in their petit taxis. It was a peaceful scene, a sharp contrast to the chaos that would surely envelop the market later in the day.

It was almost seven-thirty in the morning. We had agreed the night before with Mustafa that he would pick us up at seven-thirty, sharp. He repeated that he would not be even a few minutes late, assuring us that the company he worked for, Sahara Services, was very organized. Indeed, at 7:29 we saw Mustafa’s black-turbaned head inside the white Land Cruiser, zooming towards us at the designated meeting place where we stood with our backpacks leaning against our knees.

We had hired Sahara Services to take us to the desert, and our journey began by heading south from Marrakech that morning. Our final destination, two days drive away, was a place called Erg Chegaga. Erg Chegaga was at the edge of the dunes and close enough to the Algerian border that you could throw a camel turd across. True, this sub-adventure would consume a large part of our week in Morocco, but how often do you get the chance to get the sand of the world’s largest desert between your toes?* Don’t answer, that’s rhetorical. For your correspondent, this trip was a no-brainer.

With Mustafa behind the wheel, our Land Cruiser made quick time up the roads through the imposing High Atlas Mountains. Mustafa was most comfortable driving with très grande vitesse, whether on ice, pavement, sand, or snow. This rapid forward progress was punctuated only by the occasional "stop for photos” – which was code for his cigarette breaks. We didn’t mind. The scenery was rugged and beautiful and we were happily snapping pictures left and right.

The main obstacle between us and the desert was Tichka pass, the crossing of which required us to weave our way up a treacherous two-lane road of icy switchbacks. Mustafa explained that this road was often closed during these winter months, apparently with good reason. At one hairpin turn, a small crowd had gathered to rescue a truck which had slid off the road and rolled 30 feet to the riverbed below. That driver, assuming he survived, should consider himself lucky. Further up the road where the drop was well over 300 feet, we saw several sections of metal guard rail uprooted from their concrete bases, hanging in a limp dangle over the cliff and into the emptiness below. I wondered whether the Moroccan authorities had left those rails hanging intentionally as a grim warning to travelers. In either case, it seemed now like money very well spent to have paid to cross Tichka pass in a well-maintained 4x4 instead of a teetery public bus.

Safely past the mountains, we sped through the next several hundred kilometers of the Valley of Draa, an ever-changing landscape of red rock, cracked-dry river beds, and the occasional group of palm trees huddled around a water spring. We eventually reached a small town called M’Hamid, our last stop before Erg Chegaga, where the road we’d followed for two days came to an end. The road died a slow death, as pavement gave way to dirt, and dirt gave way to open sand. At that point we simply followed the winding sand tracks of the truck ahead of us. (We were now a caravan of three, having joined two other 4x4s along the way.) With the sun dropping in the distance, we bumped our way through sand and scrub brush. We were eager to reach the dunes for the sunset, which we saw as the dramatic climax to our exotic desert adventure. There was something poetic about seeing the sunset over the dunes that we did not want to miss. Mustafa put pedal to metal for those final miles, and we were detained only briefly to let a herd of free-roaming camels clear our path.**

Then at long last, we arrived. In front of us, the sand swooped upwards into massive, golden waves. Words will not do justice to the sight of these enormous dunes glowing in the late-afternoon sun. We had arrived at the perfect moment to watch the sun set behind them, but instinctively we knew it was not enough just to sit and watch. Somehow we needed to participate. We kicked off our shoes and sprinted up to the nearest peak. Then the next peak, and the next. Panting now, we plopped our butts in the sand and watched the sun as it melted off in the horizon.

After our dune-quest we descended back to Erg Chegaga, which consisted of a dozen mud huts arranged in a horseshoe shape at the foot of the dunes. One was a communal dining tent covered in overlapping carpets, one was marked “la cuisine” from which the familiar smell of tagine was wafting, and the rest were bedrooms. While this might sound like roughing it, these bedrooms were surprisingly comfy. Each had an oil lamp, a double bed piled high with wool blankets, and a small carpet covering the sand floor. In a real pinch, you could peel back the carpet and save yourself a chilly trip to the distant tent marked “toilette.”

We spend the latter part of the evening huddled around a fire with Mustafa, a few European tourists, and the “camp staff” – a handful of middle-aged men dressed in the full length cloaks we had seen in Marrakech (they looked exactly like the sand people in Star Wars). Once the fire was raging properly to push back the desert chill, our hosts picked up a congo-like drum and began beating out a rhythm. They sang, back and forth, in a call-and-response style. Of course we had no idea what they were saying, or even whether they were singing in Arabic or Berber. It didn’t matter. We were a million miles from anything, and we were just happy to clap along and watch the occasional glowing ember float upwards towards the dark and stars above…

Atentamente,

Your correspondent

* Technically, the Sahara is the world’s second-largest desert, behind Antarctica. It is the world’s largest hot desert.

** Technically, these were one-humped dromedaries and not two-humped camels.