Our desert tour
was the highlight of my trip. We booked an overnight trip through Moroccan
Views. I'd recommend that company to anyone.
The bus picked us
up in the morning after picking up two groups of tourists at other hotels.
There were eleven of us in all. Our guide was named Mustafa. One of our group
affectionately nicknamed him The Lion King. Abdul was our driver. He was pretty
quiet the whole trip; partly because he didn't speak English; mostly because he
had to concentrate on the twisty Moroccan roads.
Moustafa took a
liking to a pair of American girls in our group. Maggie and Katherine were
cousins from Boston and Tampa Bay. I thought they were both incredibly
beautiful, and Moustafa did as well. He gave Maggie a “good Arabic name,”
Aicha. For most of the drive Moustafa sang along to DJ Khaled's romantic tune,
“Aicha.” It's a good song. It's something Michael Bolton would sing if he'd
been born in Morocco. He and Abdul got into a mock bidding war over the size of
Maggie's dowry. The bride-price got up to 200 camels, but Aicha wouldn't budge.
There was also
Michael, an Australian financial advisor visiting from London. When we found
that there were two Michael's on the bus, Moustafa changed my name to an Arabic
one. For the rest of the trip I was “Mulit.” For the record, I don't have a
mullett.
Rounding out our
bunch were a foursome of two professional Rugby players and their wives. Ryan
was from South Africa and came to Morocco with his wife Jo. Paul was originally
from New Zealand and was there with his girlfriend Louise. The two men had been playing Rugby in Spain
for the last year and a half. They told me that Spanish rugby wasn't very
popular and that only two of their teammates were actually from Spain. Most of
their team was from the UK, Australia, and Germany. Still, they loved the game
and they certainly loved the lifestyle. Imagine: You're born and raised in
South Africa, brought up playing all kinds of sports. You marry your high
school sweetheart, and then you go play professional Rugby in the Gold Coast of
Spain. I think that's a pretty good life.
And then there
were Kit and I. It's hard for us to answer the question, “Where are you from?”
Kit's response was, “Well, I was born in northern California, but I moved to
Germany. Then I lived in Iraq for a year and after that I moved to Honduras.
Now I live in Germany again.” My answer was equally complex, but I just said,
“I'm from Indiana.”
We drove into the
mountains for nine full hours. By the end of the trip, we were thoroughly sick
of the bus. Something most people don't realize is that Marrakech isn't in the
middle of the desert. It's at the foot of the Atlas Mountains on the side that
faces the ocean. What few clouds come out of the Atlantic get stopped at the
mountains and fall as rain on Marrakech. As a result the city's in a semi-arid
zone. At this time of year, it's surrounded by lush green wheat fields and
scattered farms. To get to the desert, you cross over the mountains and into
the rain shadow. We drove for three hours through the mountains and another
four beyond that. Only then did we get to the rocky edge of the Sahara.
We unloaded from
the bus and waited for a team of camels. None of us had ever ridden one before.
They have a longer and smoother gait than horses. They're more comfortable in
my opinion. Our equipment made the ride a little rough.. Our saddles were just
blankets thrown over the camels' backs. There were no stirrups and no real
seat. After two hours of riding, the men in our group were a
little...uncomfortable. The rugby players were wearing shorts. One got off the
camel with a wedgie so deep he needed Ex-Lax to get it out. I still have a rash
on the inside of my legs. I hope it's gone before I meet my girlfriend in
Egypt. If she sees it she'll scream, “You got jock itch from some whore in
Morocco!” Then I'll have to shout, “I swear I wasn't with another woman. I was
with a camel!”
We arrived at camp
just after sunset. There were other groups of tourists and each group got its
own tent. The nine of us filed into our tent and laid back on piles of
blankets. We cracked open the booze we'd bought earlier. I had a bottle of
cheap French wine. Ryan had a bottle of local Moroccan wine. The Moroccan stuff
was actually better than the French. The two American girls had picked up a
dozen cans of Moroccan “Special” brand beer. The flavor was nothing special.
But it was funny to watch people open the first few cans. They were agitated
after the long camel ride, and they sprayed all over the tent.
After dinner in
the tent we joined the other groups for drumming and dancing around a big
bonfire. I felt a little embarrassed to be drinking in front of our Bedouin
hosts. They didn't seem to mind. In fact, they asked us to share some of our
vodka and Coke. We all wound up happy and drunk and capped off a great evening.
Comments