There are deserts everywhere.. but not all are equal. Most of the deserts we've been to so far, were rock deserts or small slivers of sand dunes. They were fun, but never really met that iconic image that we all get in our minds when we think.. "desert". We were still in search of that classic desert scenery... endless sand dunes.. as far away as the eye can see.
From Marakech, we decided to check out the 3-day visit to the "big" sand dunes of the Sahara desert. Unfortunately for us, this trip was probably the worst organized tour ever...
We were picked up as planned and brought to the main square where they join the tour groups together. Oops... it seems they overbooked the tour by 3 people and all of the mini-busses were full. We had to sit in the square for 2 hours while they searched for another company/mini-van to send us out in. Eventually, they asked if we could move our trip to the next day, but we had a night-train booked for the evening we were supposed to return.. since we had already lost 2 hours, we asked to just cancel the tour and get a refund, but they told us it's not possible to get a full refund and quickly disappeared on their cellphones again.
Eventually, they end up throwing the 3 of us into a Taxi that would take us to meet up our driver/guide in another town. They neglected to tell us that due to lost time, we'd completely miss the visit to the big castle along the way (another castle where Game of Thrones is filmed). After figuring that out, there wasn't much we could do about it.. we accepted it and and were ready to move on...
Unlucky for us, we met up with our driver/guide and he ended up being the absolute worst, most obnoxious driver ever. He had such a bad attitude, was super unhelpful, made inappropriate jokes, constantly bashed on tourists, and anytime we asked for information he answered us like we where complete morons. Our new friend Bobby, the 3rd overbooked passenger, ended up getting sick and puked out the window of the car (food poisoning). For the next 30mins, our driver non-stop scolded him saying he was retarded for eating in the square (everyone eats in the square, by the way). At one point Bobby asked the driver to stop the car because he was going to be sick again. Bobby was laying on the ground outside the car looking horrible and miserable... our unsympathetic driver quickly lost patience and started screaming "come on! just shove your fingers down your throat! 2 fingers, Bobby.. like this.. come on! let's go!!".
We eventually met up with the main group and 4 other tourists joined our vehicle, creating a nice conversational barrier between us and the driver... lucky for us, otherwise, Dom probably would have strangled the driver.
ANYWAYS... our long journey began by winding through the beautiful Atlas mountains. Along the way, we did a few quick photo stops.
We also stopped at a local village where another guide (he was super nice!) explained the traditions of the local Berber people. He asked us not to take pictures of the Berber women as it is considered offensive to the family. He told us one story of a journalist that took and published pictures of villagers working the fields.. when the husband saw the picture of his wife in public, he went straight home, divorced her and kicked her out of the home.. the wife didn't even know about the photo.
After 2 days of driving, we finally arrived at our destination: the Sahara. We hopped on a camel and and rode 1.5 hours to the desert camp to spend the night.
On our last day, we had an early breakfast and started our 12 hour drive back to Marrakech.
Prior to booking this tour, we verified with the booking agent that the tour would return early enough for us to catch our 9:45pm train and were told we'd be back by 5PM. We again verified this with the tour agency that picked us on in the morning and were told we'd have plenty of time. Apparently they all neglected to tell our driver.. and when we went to verify with him that we'd be back in Marrakech sometime before 7PM, he was furious, drove like a madman, and yelled at us the whole way home for not telling him on the first day that we had a train to catch. He got us worried saying he'd need to speed all the way back, and that if we got a ticket then we'd have to pay for it (yet he still forced us to make stops at restaurants all along the way... we think they get commission for taking tourist there).
We made it to the train station on time and ran into other people from our tour group who were catching the same train as us... turns out that all of the other vehicles from our group easily got back around 5:30pm (as we were originally told). SO, it seems our idiot driver was just looking for another excuse to yell at us and mis-treat us....
So.. The camel rides and sand dunes sure were super fun!!! .... the whole trip would have been significantly better minus the overbooking mixup and the idiot driver!! Oh well!