We took an overnight bus to Merzouga. We'd just left 20-degree weather in Fes but while we were driving we went through metre-high snow! The landscape in Morocco is so varied it's insane. Half-way through the night we stopped for a feast of meat, bread, salad and mint tea. It was past midnight by this point so it was the first meal of my birthday :) Colby asked if I happened to know what time I was born. I did - at 1:45am. He looked at his watch and said "that's RIGHT now!" So it might have also been the first time I've celebrated my birthday at the exact time I was born! The rest of the bus trip was uneventful and we arrived into Merzouga at sunrise.
After a quick snack at the hostel we had a nap on the most comfortable beds of our lives before heading into the town centre to buy scarves for our camel trip. Karim received a phone call from his sister saying that his mum was in hospital so he went back to Fes that night rather than coming into the desert with us as promised, but not before having about an hour long disagreement with Colby who wanted to change his arrangement and cut his trip a day short so he could head onto Marrakech with us. It was the most awkward situation Susan and I had ever been in - being caught between two guys, one who's promised his whole family a bunch of money from a traveller who now wants to change his plans, and who has also just gotten the news that his mum's sick in hospital, and the other who's being completely disagreeable and inconsiderate, but who's point of view we could also see because if he didn't change his plans it meant he would be stuck out in this hostel by himself for a whole extra day when even Karim wouldn't be there to keep him company! In the end, in a not very happy compromise from either of the two guys, they agreed that Colby could leave with us but he still had to pay the majority of his money - he ended up paying 50 pounds more than us! Even after this Karim guilted Susan and I into giving him an extra 200 dirhams each so that he could get back to Fes..
This only slightly tainted our experience because later that afternoon we were all introduced to our camels! Susan's was Ali Baba, mine was Hamouda (Karim told me to tell my mum that my camel would be named Hamouda earlier on the bus! I thought he was just being funny!) and Colby's was Hadanni. We had two guys who were going to be with us for the whole 3 days - Omagh and Saheed. Saheed did a lot of running around for us, setting up our beds, bringing us breakfast, etc. We really liked both of them. And so we set off over the dunes! For just a moment until my camel came loose from Susan's and Colby and I started our own trek through the desert.. Haha that was a fun 3 seconds! :) It was so incredible going over the sand dunes. It was a really lovely warm day with a light breeze, sand all around us. I had a hard time getting used to the movement of my camel so I probably looked ridiculous to the other two, but what can you do? Girl from Adelaide riding a camel doesn't exactly sound natural to me haha. Omagh and Saheed stopped us on top of a dune to watch the beautiful sunset before we continued on to our oasis. There was no water there but there were trees! We had an amazing desert tent to sleep in with huge heavy blankets to keep us warm in the freezing night. We ate dinner of chicken, vegetables, bread and tea under the stars before going over to join Omagh, Saheed and a few other Moroccan men near a fire where they were playing and singing songs using drums and some hand-held cymbals. I asked Omagh what they sang about and he said they sing about how their ancestors, the nomads of the area, came together about 30 years ago to form the town of Merzouga! It was a brilliant end to a fabulous 23rd birthday :D
We woke up at 6:30ish to stand on a tall dune and watch the sunrise. It was chilly and definitely not as beautiful as the sunset from the night before, but I'm still glad we did it. I slowly got used to squatting in the desert to pee, only once did I pee on my belt (somehow) and another time I peed on my shoe! We went back to bed in the tent after sunrise and slept until 10 when we woke up to breakfast of bread, jam, butter, laughing cow cheese, olives, tea and oranges. Straight after we'd eaten we got back on our camels and headed off to the black people's village, stopping halfway along in a tiny mud-building village which seemed to house only 5 people where we ate lunch before heading off again. We arrived in the evening right before they started playing music for us and about 7 other French tourists. The music was nice but it seemed a bit put-on to me, and as soon as the French tourists left the guys playing seemed to completely lose interest - they started smoking weed and drinking, playing their own very loud tunes on the drums. We hung out with them for a bit after we'd eaten dinner but then went to bed. They were really friendly and the main guy told me I should come back and live with them for a month working with the women doing handicrafts!
When we woke up on this final morning, all 3 of us were in pain from the camel-riding - our backs and bums were killing us! But we got back on the horse, so to speak, and rode our camels all the way back to Merzouga. Colby still needed to pay the remaining money so Omagh came in a share taxi with us to Rissani, a nearby town which was much bigger than Merzouga. We ate lunch there and got a short tour by one of Omagh's friends - he took us through the market and to a small store where we ended up spending a lot of time bargaining. Susan bought 2 pairs of earrings and I got 2 camel leather poofs! I got the guy from 650 dirhams down to 200! From there we walked to the bus station where we were told there would be a direct bus to Marrakech but we found out that it hadn't run for the past 10 days.. Convenient. It was tough to make a decision from here because all of our options didn't seem very attractive to us, but we ended up taking a share taxi to Errachidia which was about an hour and a half away where we were promised we would be able to get a bus to Marrakech in the morning. Our taxi smashed into a dog along the way - it completely broke the headlight so I'm sure we killed the dog. A friendly guy at the station helped us to buy tickets for our bus, took us across to his uncle's hotel where we stayed for 25 dirhams each (2 pounds!) and arranged dinner and wine from the black market for us! Good evening.
Our bus driver drove like a madman so we got into Marrakech at 4 in the arvo. Walking into the main square was like walking into the middle of a circus - tourists everywhere, snake charmers, henna ladies, open stalls in the centre selling food for dinner with smoke pouring out into the night, orange juice stands offering you their cheapest price, old men walking around completely covered in gold bells.. Mayhem! Such a difference to anywhere else in Morocco. I feel bad for people who just fly into and out of Marrakech and never leave! We ended up spending about 4 days here but it was definitely my least favourite place on this trip. Some highlights of Marrakech were - seeing a guy try to stab another guy in a marketplace, eating honey pancakes with mint tea for breakfast in the sunshine, walking through the souqs (markets) and getting people in the stalls to lower their prices before we've even looked at what they have, eating couscous and listening to a 2-piece band on our last night playing The Cranberries and Bob Dylan.
Our first experience upon re-entering the UK, besides the drizzly weather, was a man screaming abuse at his children - the little girl spilt something and went to clean it up and the father's response was the scream at the top of his lungs "don't you touch that mess! They get paid to clean and we don't!" Oh. My. God. It was slightly depressing getting back there after the sunshine and relaxation of Morocco, but it was wonderful getting back to the flat and catching up with Paul and the others, and then seeing Rory the next day :) So that's the end of my adventures again until April when I'm heading to Turkey for ANZAC Day and then onto India for about 3 weeks! Stay tuned.
Peace
x
Snow!

Amazing skies
Susan and I with little Mona, some relation to Karim
Camel time


Sunset

Our tent in the desert

Tracks made by a desert beetle

Saheed and Omagh

The guys warming their drums in the black people's village

Cutest exchange I've ever seen - he'd just given her a piece of laughing cow cheese and she couldn't open it so he was giving her a demonstration while she stared up at him
Colby and Susan with wine from the black market
Driving through some amazing mountains
Me in an orange juice stand, Marrakech
One of the evening stalls in the main square