Camel ride

The camels were waiting for us when we arrived in Merzouga, a village where all the camel rides into the desert start. It was my first time in the desert and while I might have previously ridden a camel in a zoo I was well prepared for what I was told about the real desert camels: they are supposed to be grumpy. So it was a pleasant surprise that my camel actually seemed nice, it only snorted at me once.


Since it was my first ever ride into the desert, I was fascinated by the rich red tones of the sand. It was near sundown so the shadows were long and the colors were even more intense. We rode the camels for about one hour, going behind a hill where all we could see all around us was the desert. Looking at a map I know that it was a very small desert, in fact, had we continued for another hour around the next hill, we would have come out of the desert on the other side. But it was still magical to see nothing but sand all around us.


In the evening we were entertained by the Berber camel keepers who sang and played drums. It was beginning to get cold so they lighted a fire. And we were able to watch the stars. And get sand in our shoes when we walked anywhere. We spent the night in tents covered with several layers of blankets that they provided. Fortunately I knew in advance that the nights were going to be cold so I brought my warmest sleeping bag which I covered with a blanket and pulled everything over my head so my ears wouldn’t freeze. I’m not exaggerating, it really was freezing, we ran across a frozen puddle in the morning.


After the unpleasantly cold night we mounted our camels again very early in the morning and rode out of the desert into the sunrise. While I could say that the evening ride was extraordinary, the morning ride was just so very cold that I could hardly wait to get back to civilization, take my hands off the metal handles with which I hung onto my camel and have some hot tea.