The Desert, Part 2: A Day in the Sand

     Saturday morning we lazily awoke and enjoyed almost painfully strong water flow from the hotel showers.  My British friend Jorge was the first to try it, and the spray sent water over the shower and into the bedroom, where I awoke to water splashing on my face.  The drain also had difficulty keeping up with the immense flow, and water flowed into the bedroom, threatening to soak--once again--our clothes.  

     Discomfort averted, we passed the day fairly quietly, but some of us had a quick swim in the beautiful pool over which the Spanish tourists endlessly oodled.  In true tourist fashion, about 40 of them lined up in next to the pool for a giant group shot of them all in bright green, tour group polo shirts.  Jimmy--a friend of mine who will do just about anything you pay him to--decided to rain on a little parade.  When all the Spaniards lined up for their nice photo, Jimmy ripped off his shirt, cried out "America," and cannonballed into the pool halfway between them and the camera.  Once my video of it hits YouTube, it's sure to worsen U.S.-Spanish relations.  Oh wait, can they be worse than they are now?

     Saturday afternoon we packed up and headed for Merzouga--about an hour drive still--where we almost immediate got on camels and rode for two hours through the desert to a small, permanent camp our hotel has set up for just such excursions.  The sand was a bright reddish-orange and the camels smelled bad.  No adjectives exist that can adequately describe the discomfort of riding on a camel.  Every downhill step the camel takes mashes your balls into Smuckers Original. 

     Once at camp, our guides played ridiculous music on bongos and metal clapper cymbals.  I don't know if it was traditional Berber music, or just tourist music, but it was loud and gave me a headache.  Our camp butted up against a huge sand dune (probably more than 1,000 feet high), and a few of us made the arduous trek up.  The sand was packed so tightly in places that if you went fast enough, you wouldn't even sink in.  That was the easiest way to climb, even if more tiring.  

      We'd left our hotel at sunset, so it was fully dark when we'd arrived at camp, and on top the dune it was pure night.  The desert can get pretty cold, they say, but it didn't seem too bad.  Ben, Megan and I considered sleeping at the top of the dune, since we were going to climb it the next morning anyway to watch the sun rise.  The cold wasn't terrible, but the sand in the eyes was, so that was a no-go.  And when I came down, I knew I'd feel the aches in the morning.