Neither the electricity nor water were operating at Hotel Kasbah Le Touareg when we arrived. Not just here but throughout Merzouga. However, there were assurances that it would go back on n a few hours which it did. While ex-Marine and I opted to sit by the swimming pool and relax for a while, the entire Explore group went out for a three hour 4X4 excursion. This optional trip was heading around the dunes and a visit to a local Berber house. They’ll come back to the hotel after that with time for those who are taking a camel ride into the desert and overnite in the Berber tent to pack up a few nighttime necessities. Only few others in the group were not going to spend the night in the tent and I just hoped there would be something edible for dinner. (The hotel cooks dinner and transports out to the tent.)

The Erg Chebbi is a range of gold-coloured sand that stretches into the “Sand Sea” of Morocco.The word erg is Arabic for “great sand dune area.” Most visitors stay put in Merzouga but there are some great longer trips that really do go into the desert for days. Most are by camel and leave from Ouarzazate, another one of our destinations on this trip but not via camel. The dunes are simply stunning with colors that change from minute to minute. Light beige to yellow at dawn. Gold under the intense midday sun. And deep orange at sunset. Just keep snapping away.

Lonely Planet Guidebooks

The two of us set off around 5:00 p.m. to walk out to the sand dunes, just across the road, for the sunset. A stop to watch a few camels sitting around and munching (I find camels immensely fascinating with great expressions and personality). While standing there, a young boy came up with his pet desert fox, properly known as the Fennec Fox, that he found as a pup (probably so wrong). The desert fox resembles nothing more than a big Chihuahua with big, pointy ears and is endangered because the locals catch them and put them on display for tourists as a means of income. They are so cute and rarely seen in the wild (except we caught a lucky break and did see one in the desert outside of Bahariya Oasis in Egypt).

Plodding through the desert, I intently watched a black beetle leaving teeny, tiny prints in the sand as it quickly scurried through the dunes, investigated unique water wells reached by climbing into a small tower by ladder, and paused to admire bright, yellow flowers that had just sprouted due to heavy rainfall the last few days…View image.

Closer to the big sand dunes, we started walking up one. Have you ever tried walking up a sand dune? If the answer is no, prepare for a challenging workout. It’s one foot forward, three sliding back but so much fun. A few adventurous tourists looked like tiny specks on top of one giant dune…View image. Different areas even rent snowboards to use on the dunes. That’s how fine the grains of sand are. (You’ll have to wait for the articles on the Western Desert of Egypt to learn all that we learned.) There were dune buggies racing in the sand and we sat and waited until we saw our group appearing in the distance on their camels, each camel led by a handler.

Cheers for them (“libby-tibby-too”), and they slowly disappeared leaving the desert silent once again with just one local sitting in the sands watching us as we walked back to the hotel, leaving the dunes behind

It was dinner time for those who weren’t overnighting in the tent, and we entered the unlit and totally black dining room. A young man approached us and asked, Voulez-vous (what do you want)? We replied, “to mange (eat). What is on the menu?” He returns with another man who says, “I am the chef, what do you wish? You are not camping?” The conversation deteriorated from there. “Umm…No, we’d like dinner, do you have a menu?” Chef said, “No, what do you want to eat?” “Chicken?” “No.” “Do you have sandwiches?” Chef replied, “Fromage (cheese). “What else?” “Meat.” “What kind of meat? “Meat with tomatoes and onions.” Last question, “Can we see what it looks like?” With that, the three of us walked back into the deserted kitchen and Chef showed us a pot standing on a counter filled with what looked like beef stew. We looked at each other, shook our heads, said, “Never mind” and walked back to the room.

I do not eat meat that has been standing around for who knows how many hours, unheated and unrefrigerated to take a chance. Thank goodness we still had two packets of tuna left in our stash along with stale bread from lunch yesterday. TIP: There’s a reason why I always recommend travelers bring supplementary food with them. One never knows. We found out the next morning that Jim and Heather also ended up in the same situation and munched on leftovers in their room.

$13.95 per day rental cars with low Hotwire Hot-Rates!