Sahara Expedition - Day One

When we arrived in Marrakesh, one of our missions was to find an excursion into the desert. Scotty had some specific places that he knew he wanted to visit, and I mostly wanted to see the Sahara without it costing too much money. Scott set out on our first day and soon returned to the hostel, really excited about a tour he found - a three day, two night trip for around $100 each.

We went to go talk to the shopkeeper who was selling the tour - these tours get sold all over Marrakesh and then somehow combined behind the scenes; we talked to people on our tour who had booked the trip in restaurants, through their hostels, etc. We asked the shopkeeper a bunch of questions: do the guides speak English? Is there anything we need to bring extra money for? Is there anything special we should pack? We found out later that his answers were ALL LIES. At the time, we booked the tour, knowing that we couldn't expect much for the price we were paying.

He told us to meet at his store at 7:00 AM the next day, where a driver would pick us up. We had a fairly quiet New Years Eve and woke up early to walk to the store. When we got there, there was no one there. We waited. A few other people from our hostel passed by with their excursions. We waited. After a while, the shopkeeper came hurrying around the corner and explained that our original driver had a headache but there was another one coming. We stood around for a while, until finally another man came around the corner. The shopkeeper told us to go with him, so we walked out onto a larger street with him (our hostel and this store were basically in an alley). The "driver" got on a moped and started slowly cruising down the street, with us and the shopkeeper walking along behind him.

After about 100 feet, he stopped the moped and told me to put my small backpack at his feet. I complied, and then he indicated that we should get on the back of the moped. Scott, unable to resist any sort of two-wheeled vehicle, leapt on behind him, and they both looked at me expectantly. I momentarily thought of refusing, but then I had a mental image of me running along behind while they zipped across town. (When I told Scotty about this later, he described it as, "Like the kid who missed the bus: hanging on to your backpack, mittens flapping.") So, I gamely hopped on the very back and attempted to hold on to Scotty. This was made more difficult by the fact that in one hand, I was clinging to a 1.5 liter bottle of water, which was 90% empty. It was a pretty genuine third world experience: three people, one small backpack, one medium backpack, one large backpack, one stupid mostly empty bottle of water and a large shopping bag filled with Berber carpets, all riding along on a tiny moped. If only I had been holding a goat.

Luckily the ride was neither very long nor very fast - we rode several hundred meters to one side of the square where several tour vans were congregated. We disengaged ourselves from the moped and stood around while they got the groups organized. Eventually, they called for the three-day tour, and we shuffled over to our tour van. A bunch of the backpacks got strapped to the roof, and we grabbed the first row of seats behind the driver. The van slowly filled until all 14 seats were taken, and we set off.

The beginning of our trip took us up into the Atlas mountains, and the road was winding and slightly terrifying. Also, we were hungry and the van was freezing. Everyone huddled silently, trying to stay warm. Eventually, we stopped at a store where we could get food and drinks, and we purchased the first of many, many cans of Pringles. This also gave us a good opportunity to suss out the group. Our 14 person excursion consisted of:

• Anne and Scotty
• Three young British women
• Three Chinese - two young men and a young woman - currently studying in London
• Two Italian guys
• Four more Italians - two couples - who pretty much tried their hardest to be negative stereotypes of Italians. The girls were dark-haired and pretty, and mostly didn't talk to anyone and sat around looking annoyed. One of the guys had a ridiculous mustache and always wore a scarf. These clowns would soon become our sworn enemies but we didn't realize this on the first day.

Since we had six Italians, the driver decided to speak Italian for most of the trip, which was sad for the EIGHT of us who did not speak Italian. (It later came to light that he did NOT, in fact, speak English.) However, he wasn't a particularly good guide, even in Italian. Mostly we would stop every so often and he would gesture for us to get out, saying, "Photo! Photo!" After we all milled around for a bit, he would shout, "Andiamo!" and we would all troop back into the van and continue on. As the sun got higher in the sky, the van thankfully warmed up. We stopped for lunch, which was OK but not great, and then the driver yelled at us to go see the nearby kasbah. I was a little cranky at this point and mostly just glared at the kasbah, but Scott had a good time exploring it. I played by a creek until nearby construction workers shouted at me to stop.

The rest of the day was more of the same. We would stop at some sort of unspecified location, get out, and then get back in the van. It was at this point that I taught Scotty about "What's different about this one?", and we eventually stopped getting out of the van altogether. Here is a great photo representation of one of these stops. This is one of the Asian guys, just sort of milling around until we could get back in the van. We called him "Harry Potter."

Here is the van. Yes, we fit 14 people + driver + luggage in that van.

Late in the day, it got dark (and cold) and we began winding along another mountain road. I discovered that the van did have seatbelts and vowed to wear mine the rest of the trip. We kept passing brightly lit, cheerful looking guesthouses, and I kept hoping we would stop. (We knew we'd be spending the first night of the trip in a hotel/guesthouse) Finally, we pulled up in front of one and unloaded the van, unstrapping the bags from the roof and waiting in the lobby for further instructions. They had a mini-fireplace filled with hot coals, and we all gathered around it, trying to warm our hands. We waited and waited. And waited.

Eventually, it was determined that we were at the wrong hotel. We loaded back into the van, except this time, we had to cram in all the bags which had previously been on the roof. It was cosy AKA really crowded!! We pulled back out onto the road, and our driver asked some random men on the street where our hotel was. GREAT. After a few minutes, we arrived at the new hotel. We were each given rooms and told that dinner would be at 7:30. We all headed off to our rooms to get unpacked. The rooms were basic and unheated, but the beds were comfortable and came equipped with massive piles of blankets. Before dinner, Scotty and I sat around, our mental state rapidly diminishly, laughing hysterically about how awful the tour was. When I say we were "laughing hysterically", I am telling the truth: there was a real element of hysteria to our maniacal laughter. We managed to pull ourselves together in time to get dinner, which actually turned out to be delicious! First course was a very good barley soup, followed by chicken with couscous and vegetables. We also sat after dinner and talked with the British girls and the two (not awful) Italian guys. At the end of the evening, we had higher hopes for the next day - we were now well-fed, had some new friends, and were excited to reach the desert and stay in tents!!

COMING UP: Passive aggressive war with the Italians, we get an actual tour guide, we reach the desert, have an unforgettable camel ride, spend the night, and eventually come home. Also, LOTS more pictures - really good ones! STAY TUNED!!