Day #11,580 {New Year’s Eve 2013}: I woke up in a tent in the middle of the Sahara.
And laid there for a few minutes while it sunk in that I was waking up in a tent in the middle of the Sahara.
For a landscape so barren at first glance, the Sahara solicits exploration.
Mr. M & I decided to go for a post-breakfast stroll through the dunes to take in more of our desert environs.
As the world’s largest hot desert (Antarctica & the Arctic are bigger but are considered cold deserts… mmm… cold desserts… ), it seems about right that the word Sahara is Arabic for The Great Desert.
On our drive out to camp the day before, I’d been surprised to see that much of the desert was hard-packed dirt rather than the Lawrence of Arabia style dunes that I’d imagined.
The exotic sandscapes of movie lore certainly exist within the Sahara, but the shifting dunes (known as ergs) are less common than the rocky hamada landscape we’d driven through.
One of the things I was most looking forward to on our Morocco trip was getting to see the vast expanse of stars free from the pesky light pollution of civilization.
But wouldn’tcha know- I found myself enjoying the view under my feet just as much.
Is this really the same annoying stuff that I drag into the house on my flip flops? Why does it look so beautiful?
After millennia of getting a good pummeling (geological term, of course) from whipping sandstorms, the Saharan sand is baby-powder-fine and soft. Getting sand in my shoes wasn’t irritating or uncomfy like it is at the beach… it just feels like a soft, really lumpy gel insole.
Despite my new muse (“I shall call her… ‘sand’…), let it be known that I still did a healthy amount of craning my neck around the campfire.
Standing somewhere completely unique (with a whole bunch of completely unique sand filling my sneakers) made me appreciate things that might not have garnered a second glance back home.
Sand… sky… stars…
Not so bad for the middle of nowhere, Sahara.
Explore the rest of New Year’s Eve in the Sahara (which had to be continued because SOMEBODY took way too many pictures of sand) trying to tell a camel to giddy-up.
Explore the previous day’s adventures bathing in glorified goat poop & earning my Berber turban on our journey to the middle of the Sahara.
Details of the Day:
Our Life in the Sand: Especially for being so far out in the middle of nowhere, Erg Chigaga Luxury Desert Camp was absolutely, positively amazing.
Each tent contained an en-suite bathroom with a sorta-kinda manually flushing toilet. That’s waaay better than the communal hole in the ground I was picturing… although most of the desert camps do tend towards the rugged.
Unfortunately, none of us got a pic of the desert shower system, which involved a stool, a bucket of hot water, and a cup. Bottom line- at least in our group, there was not a lot of showering goin’ on in the Sahara… which is plenty easy when you can blame the stink on camels.
The Berber People: Life in the sand wouldn’t be complete without some info on the Amazigh, or Berbers- the indigenous peoples of North Africa. (Old-Timey Cultural Insensitivity Alert: Berber apparently stems from the Roman word barbarian. It’s bad enough to pillage and plunder, invaders… do you really need to insult the locals, too? Ugh. Old-Timey Cultural Insensitivity.)
While the Berbers initially resisted the Arab invasion of the 7th Century, they soon converted to Islam, and nearly all follow Muslim traditions today… although Berbers tend to be a lot more communal and offer women a fairly progressive degree of autonomy.
Wow...love...LOVE the pictures...are you wearing a parka looking at the stars? I heard it gets cold at night, but never imagined THAT cold...as always...enjoyed the read! Every time I read a post I get itchy feet! hahahah...time to plan an adventure me thinks!
It feels wrong complaining to a Canadian about being cold, but that desert was freezing at night! Or, more accurately, below freezing! New Year's Eve I was in a parka, two pairs of leggings, and three (yes, 3) pairs of socks. :) We Americans are lightweights!
Hahaha..naa....that must have been tough on the system to have those extremes ...how warm was it during the day?
Weather during the day was perfect (16 or 17C)! I think the nighttime desert cold was just helping to prepare me for getting stuck for a few days in the so-called Polar Vortex in New York... it helped ease me into the negative temperatures! ;)
Amazing photos! Sand really is amazing, and I can't get over that amazing orange tint is has. I love orange!
Me too! Orange is such a happy color, isn't it? Maybe that's why I was so happy out there in the desert... lots of sunshine & orange everywhere you looked. I couldn't get over how quickly & completely the sand changed color depending on the sunlight... it ranged from pastel to almost fluorescent!
What an amazing experience! I love the desert, although I've never been to the Sahara I grew up just west of the sand dunes in So. California along I-8, then spent a few years outside of Joshua Tree, CA. The silty sand is okay, but it does get everywhere and into everything. I also thought that most of the Sahara was soft sand and not hard pack. Thanks so much for sharing.
I'm a little jealous that you grew up in such beautiful (sandy) country! Joshua Tree is one of the prettiest places I've ever seen. Was there any sand-boarding or ATV-ing in the dunes where you grew up? It's true- I'm honestly STILL finding Saharan sand, and we've been back for over a month now!