Day 11 – Wednesday October 15, 2014

I woke up feeling ill but took some medication. I felt better as the day went on and slept a lot in the van. We drove for majority of the day heading towards the desert. We got the desert around 5:30pm and started our camel ride. We were actually riding single humped camels, “dromedaries” which only have one hump as opposed to two on a camel. It was a fun and slow pace 1.5 hour ride.

It was beautiful seeing the sunset against the desert and the sand dunes. It was quiet and peaceful.

We arrived at the camp and ate dinner. The camp was very nice and we had twin beds. There were porta-potties but they were different from the ones we have in North America –very clean though!

The stars came out. We stared into the sky and even took our chairs outside of the campsite for a better view. The berbers started a fire and played some drums. We wandered onto a massive sand dune and just sat there for a while taking in the view of the stars. It was amazing.

Day 12 – Thursday October 16, 2014

We woke up with very sore inner thighs. Oh man, the dromedary did a bit of damage to us. We watched the sunrise and then went to try sandboarding. I was really looking forward to sandboarding but it was very disappointing. The berbers just handed us a dingy old board and expected us to go climb and board.

I’m not complaining about climbing the dune… I’m complaining about this unwaxed board that did not slide at all. First of all, the bindings are just like snowboarding bindings but you have no boots. My feet were not properly strapped in –in fact one of the boards was missing a strap. The board was not waxed that I couldn’t even slide sitting down like a toboggan. It was an epic fail experience. I will have to try it again in another desert with a legit sandboarding excursion. We did some fake action shots though.

We had breakfast and then depart the campsite by dromedary. This ride back was still scenic but not as enjoyable as our inner thighs were already sore from last night.

We ate lunch at a dingy roadside stop but this time the food was not good. The service was slow, food was cold and there were flies everywhere.

We arrived in Ouarzazate around 5pm and headed to the small souks for some souvenir shopping. The shop owners were quite desperate for our business… this meant some intense bargaining action. I’m getting more comfortable and better at it. One item, he proposed 40DH and I stuck to my ground for 10Dh. He went lower 30DH, 20DH and expected me to go higher but I knew he wanted to sell me it. He caved and sold it for 10DH. We continued shopping and I bought a couple of other items and was able to knock the price down 50-75% off. We ate dinner at Riad and relaxed for the rest of the evening.

Day 13 – Friday October 17, 2014

I enjoyed the red architecture of this town, Ouarzazate. All of the buildings were new and everything seemed orderly and clean. When I picture morocco, this is the architecture and scenery I see. We stoped at Atlas studios where we got to see some movie sets. It wasn’t an artificial experience like universal studios. You literally get to see 1-2 old movie sets.

We explored Ait-Ben-Haddou, a famous fortified city, or ksar protected by UNESCO.  Many movies were filmed here included Gladiator. The scenery is exactly how I pictured Morocco to be.

We had a nice couscous lunch in the Altas mountains before arriving back in Marrakech. In Marrakech, we wandered the souks and shop for souvenirs. We ended up at the lively Jemaa el-Fnaa square where all the food stalls were bustling and everyone was out and about. We ordered orange juice and some kebabs from Chez Hassan. They were recommended by our raid and they also approached us and promised “No diarrhea!” It was delicious and lived up to its promise. Another local tried to push us to his food stall but we told him we already ate at Chez Hassan. It was like we offended his entire family and he proclaimed “Enjoy your diarrhea!”

We were still hungry and I wanted a birds eye view of the square. We went to rooftop patio and had “pizza”. The view was excellent but the pizza was the worst I’ve ever had! Seriously how do you mess up pizza?! Well… Use a gross cornmeal crust with no tomato sauce.