Christmas Eve

12/24/09 – Day 8

Last night after our long drive from Fez we arrived in Rissani and switched from our van to a 4X4 and drove through the desert (no roads). We pasted about 5 “hotels”…all looked like castles and were far apart from each other. We finally arrived to our hotel –it looked like the others we had passed, so we were excited to retire in our “castle in the sand.” The hotel was really rustic and barely had electricity; actually around 9pm the electricity ran out and they lit candles down the hallway. We were surprised when we got in our rooms to see that the halls were painted mud and hay. There was patio/balcony above our room, so every time someone walked on it, mud dropped onto our beds  Guess who was at our place?! Khaled and the group of people he met in Fez. There are a lot of places in the Sahara where they do camel treks, so it was crazy to run into them here. Last night the people who ran the place played Atlas music (violin, tambourines and singing) and Berber drums…it was a lot of fun to listen and watch. The musicians walked around trying to get everyone up to dance…I didn’t dance, but John and Pete did. Our camel trek into the Sahara started at 4:00pm, so we had all day to explore.

Five things from today:

1. After breakfast (bread, laughing cow cheese, jam and olives) we walked to explore the sand dunes. The sand was red (I was expecting it to be beige)…the wind was blowing pretty hard, so there were a lot of cool designs in the sand. John, Pete and Alex wanted to walk up to the top of the tallest dune; Caroline and I decided that half way was good enough for us…it was really cool, but sand in the eyes was not feeling too hot on my contacts 

2. After the dunes, we ate lunch then headed to the camels. Khaled and his friends were doing a 2 day trek so we ended up going on a different route. We rode with a dad and his kids; for their Christmas gift he gave them a camel trek and trip to Morocco. SO the camels…they were all lined up and kneeling down waiting for us…the camel leader assigned people to each camel. There was one camel in the back that looked like it just ate 10 Alka-Seltzer’s…it was foaming at the mouth a lot…I hid while they were looking for someone to ride that one. I also hid while they assigned the one I named “mad camel disease”…Alex got that one and I got the one in front of it. They have you sit on top of the camel in a make shift saddle then directed the camel to stand up. Guess who came to visit me every time we stopped…the camel with mad camel disease. The first time we stopped the crazy camel came right next to my face lookin’ for some love…I immediately screamed “no, I don’t want him by me!” the camel guide just yelled “no problem…” Guess what I can check off my list and not think twice about doing again…camel riding! We rode through dunes…going up and down the sandy dunes was the most nerve wracking. While going down one of the hills john said “Caroline, I think Orson may be an only child.” At one point Pete’s camel thought we were stopping so it started kneeling down then when his came was dragged up by the rest of the group, it was tripped up on the sand…I could have sworn Pete was going to topple over with the camel and drag the rest of us down the dune…almost immediately after that I rummaged through my bag and popped a Xanex –not kidding. It was about an hour ride and after we passed two other “camps” we arrived at ours.

3. Our camp was made of a bunch of Berber blankets sewn together. When we arrived we were shown where we would sleep. There were blankets on the ground covering the sand in a space large enough for all five of us. Soon after we arrived, we were invited into a large tent that had a lamp and two small tables. We were given tea then we sat uncomfortably with the small family (that we soon named Fozzy and the overbite twins) that took the trek with us. The family spoke French and Spanish and a little English. We all did laugh together when we were reminded that John used his pajama bottoms for his turban. Our dinner was brought to us after one of our guides told us a few riddles. Dinner was chicken with potatoes, peas and carrots –it was really good.

4. After dinner we decided to play cards and invited our fellow trekkers to play along. We tried to think of a game that wouldn’t be too difficult to play with our language barrier. We decided to play Uno. As the game went on, we added rules (a 4 was draw four, 7 was skip, etc.). We also changed “uno” to rack-attack which means “joking” in Berber. Every time one of us would lay down a “draw 4” we would say Merry Christmas. It was a really fun Christmas Eve.

5. After our 4th or 5th game of Rack-Attack we retired to our tent. The holes in the “ceiling” welcomed the rain and sand into our sleeping area. I covered my face with my scarf that I was thankful I had. We stayed up for about an hour talking about various things from our favorite Christmas songs, our religious backgrounds and our childhood pets. I think my favorite story was Pete’s…he once had a guinea pig and when it died, his parents told him it died from reading the news paper that was in its cage.