We Finally Get Our Just Deserts (No, that's not a spelling mistake. Read and understand.)

Morocco kicked all sorts of butt. If you recall, my one complaint with Bali was that we had already seen pretty much all that the island had to offer on some previous part of the trip. We needed something different. Well, we got it. Morocco was a completely new experience for all of us. The only thing even remotely close for me, in a lifetime worth of experience, was Israel, which I visited almost exactly thirty years ago. As did Asia, Morocco provided us with our fill of Mother Nature and with plenty of religious grandiosity. But there was no overlap in the details… at all.

The reasons for going to Morocco were entirely about the desert and the camels. And that part of the adventure did not disappoint in the least. (Wait a second. If something doesn’t disappoint, shouldn’t that mean it “appoints”? What is up with that? Oh. I’m sorry for ruining the train of thought. Let me begin again.) Neither the desert nor the camels disappointed us in the least. In fact, the desert rocked, literally and figuratively, though in the literal sense the rocks were more of a conglomeration of zillions of eensy-weensy jobbers that were so fine, they were almost soft to the touch. But I am getting ahead of myself. My point was that we were drawn to Morocco by the desert, but we ended up enjoying much more than that. So as always, I shall have to begin, again, at the beginning.

Side joke: “How do you get a cat in the refrigerator?” Answer to come.

The flight from Bali to Singapore was quick. The layover at Singapore airport was too short and altogether sublime. We love that place! The flight to London was long but as pleasant as a flight in cattle-class can be. I watched four movies. Enough said. London was all about recovering from timezone-warp. We had two nights and one day and did little besides eat and sleep. A lovely Indian food restaurant did three of us some good, while Carol just stayed in the hotel and slept through dinner. We did make a quick visit to the Natural History Museum as it was quite near our hotel. I remember an over abundance of dinosaur bones and a crazy astronomy display, nothing more. It is all one big jet-lagged blur.

Back on another plane, and we were in Morocco before you could say "tally-ho," or whatever those crazy Brits say when you leave. The flight was short and sweet. It included some lovely views of the Iberian peninsula. And then, just like that, we were in a new continent yet again, and ready for new experiences.

Answer to joke: “Open the door, put the cat in, close the door. Simple!” Not funny? My children disagree, based on their reaction when they heard this whilst sitting under the stars in the middle of the desert. There is more of this to come. I apologize in advance.

We caught a taxi that was supposed to take us to our hotel, but that instead dropped us off on some unmarked dirt road surrounded by stone walls.  Luckily there was a man waiting for us there who took us down one dark alley (though the sun was still high in the sky) after another.  Each alley was progressively narrower than the last, with lower and lower archways between the walls.  If we didn’t know any better, and really, we didn’t, we would have expected a mugging at that point.  We really shouldn’t ever have seen our luggage again.  It was crazy.  Even the alleys have alleys.  The hotel door, just like dozens of others that we’d passed, was an unmarked full metal rectangle (albeit intricately detailed) five feet high and three feet wide in the middle of a giant stone wall that looked no different than the previous two hundred meters of wall after five or six unmarked turns.  Five-o-clock news, here we come.  Is that guy salivating on us?

Broad daylight, I swear.  These alleyways are scary.

I guess we didn't get a picture of the first hotel door.  This was the door to the hotel on the fifth night.  Much larger,  but same idea.  No markings anywhere on the endless wall other than that number.

But when we stepped through the hotel door, we stepped into a wide-open oasis of charm and culture. We were bombarded with fantastic sights and wonderful smells all around us. The fountains and pools and ceramic sculptures and murals and tapestries and wall paintings and gorgeous tile work were well, 100% contrast from the walls outside.  And that was just the courtyard.  The rooms were equally charming.

Side joke #2: OK. But how do you get a camel into the refrigerator in four steps?

We loved all of the rooms that we stayed in while in Morocco (there were four if you are keeping count), even the one that had genuine Saharan sand as the floor.  The character of each was over-the-top authentically Moroccan.  So Cool!  So what makes Morocco, well, Moroccan?  To start, it is a mix of French culture, Arabic culture, and the local Berber culture that thrived there before the conquering influences made their mark.  English was a distant fourth on the language usage scale, but we had no trouble finding people who spoke it fluently.  The official language is Arabic, and everything is written in that beautiful script.  I’m not even certain Berber has a written language.  We never encountered it. 

OK, Carol tells me there most certainly is one, and it is character based and reads from left to right, rather than the right to left of Arabic.  But I swear it is never used.  But most Moroccans speak in Berber to each other, or so I’m told.  Not that I can hear a difference between that and Arabic.  Every local who sees the white folk coming immediately bursts into French, and only defers to English when given that eyes-glazed-over look.  But they all seem to speak English as well.  At least they speak enough to be able to sell you stuff you don’t need, and don’t want, but may buy anyway, just to get them to stop trying so hard to sell it to you.  When I say all of them, I mean all of the men.  We almost never spoke to, or were spoken to by, a woman.  They all wear the ubiquitous Islamic head coverings and do not make eye contact, much less interact, with foreigners.  Rather than editorializing on that situation, I shall take it for what it is, and comment no further.

Just as in Asia, religion was everywhere, but not in the form of statues and idols and over-done temples.  There were two or three mosques on every block, but they were so understated that the kids didn’t even realize the mosques were anything other than houses.  The women’s clothing was an obvious nod to Islamic tradition, but even the men were garbed in such a way as to promote tradition over comfort.  The call to prayer would come blasting in over the loudspeakers in whatever town you found yourself six times a day (once two hours before dawn!, and once each at dawn and midday, once in the afternoon when shadows are as long as the object casting said shadow, once at sunset, and once when the last light of day has disappeared). “God is Great.  There is no god but God. Mohammed is the Prophet of God.  Come to prayer.  Come to salvation.  God is Great.  There is no god but God.”  Over and over and over again.  And you thought I spoke not a word of Arabic.

Answer to joke #2:  Open door.  Remove cat.  Shove in camel.  Close door.  Problems?

Side joke #3:  What do I call my delectable cheddar? 

One shot of the bazaar from a cafe terrace.  That's one of those unassuming mosques dead center, by the way.

Endless wares to ogle.

Thousands of "stalls" just like this one.

Chloe is trying out her bedouin look in a scarf shop.

This guy didn't want us to pass through this way.  He was kind of an ass about it.

In the main square of the old walled part of the city of Marrakech, and branching out in all directions from there, was a bazaar just like you see in the movies.  Endless stalls filled with colorful wares and even more colorful salesman made for an experience I shall never forget.  Josh learned how to haggle.  Carol got swindled into buying a couple of scarves she wasn’t even looking to buy.  We all got schooled in the art of only looking at things in your peripheral vision so as not to attract the salesman.  On our first day we sat on a veranda on the second floor of a café so that we could watch the hustle and bustle from on high.  After that we got braver and joined in with the fun.  We never saw a snake-charmer as was promised, but we did see a number of performers and countless toothless beggars and endless men wearing the garb of the sand people in Star Wars.  The pointy hoods made us smile every time.  My favorite part was the staggeringly large group of guys who sell nuts.  We’ve got a picture to show you how that worked.

Nice hoody.  Definitely a crowd favorite.

The nut guys have a little hole through which they crawl to be in among the fruits and nuts.  We stocked up on both.

Answer to joke number 3:  Nach-yo Cheese!

Side joke number 4:  How do you make a tissue dance?

Moroccans eat the same two meals over and over again.  One is couscous with vegetables and either chicken or lamb.  The other is a stew called tagine that is potato based but usually contained chicken or beef or lamb as well.  Both are excellent.  I had a tagine cooked at a stall no bigger than a kid’s lemonade stand once, and it was top-rate cuisine.  Though upon finishing I noticed that the method of cleaning the dishes before re-use was to rub with a napkin.  Ouch.  All tagine is made in little ceramic pots with lids that look like the pointy hats all the wanderers in the market wear.  Those cooking pots were also sold in seemingly every other stall in the bazaar.  We would have bought one as a souvenir if we could have handled the extra weight in our luggage.  But alas, souvenirs are not to be had.

This is the lunch stall to which I referred.  Yummy!

The bazaar in Marrakech was pretty much our entire Morocco experience for the first day and the last day of the five-day trip.  The middle three days, however, were all about the Sahara desert adventure.  I will leave the telling of the camel part of the journey up to Chloe.  But it wasn’t all about the destination.  The journey in and of itself was worth an account.

Answer to joke #4:  Put a little boogie in it.

Side joke #5:  A lion was having a jungle party and a truce was called so that no animals would need to fear being eaten for one night.  All of the animals of the jungle and the forests and the desert and the savannah were invited.  Almost every animal came.  It was a total rager.  But which animal never showed up?

For starters, the SUV we made the trip in was actually in motion for a grand total of about 27 hours over three days.  If you want an epic adventure, you’ve got to be willing to put in the effort.  It wasn’t particularly grueling, however.  We had three other people on the tour with us: Mohammed, our guide/driver, and two Swedish ladies in their mid-twenties named Johanna and Emilie, who were extremely friendly.  All three were wonderful traveling companions.  We also made one interesting stop after another, which really helped to break up the monotony.  And the scenery was incredible.  We had sweeping mountain vistas and enormous canyons and endless deserts with bright blue skies and orange sands.  There were hundreds of villages where the buildings, which were made of the surrounding clay, blended into the hillsides so well that you’d have to be looking for them specifically if you wanted to even notice they were there.

A typical town in the hills.

The Kasbah from a distance. 

A closer look.

A list of the movies that featured this particular kasbah.

Do you think it was built to code?

We were taken to an extremely famous Kasbah that was built in the 11^th century and that has been used in countless Hollywood movies.  We got to climb around on the roofs and pretend we belonged in the land of Lawrence of Arabia.  We were taken to a canyon so magnificent that that other one near Vegas seems like more of a ditch now.  We went through mountain passes with endless switchbacks that seemed at time like the Colorado Rockies at others like the Swiss Alps. 

Impressive mountain views.

Mohammed even brought us into his own home and fed us a Tagine that was out of this world good and cooked by his wife.  We, of course, never got to meet her.  But the personal touch was not unappreciated, especially in a culture that is so private.  We did get to meet his adorable daughter, though.  I guess three-year-olds are still allowed to be sociable.  Also, in his hometown, we went to a warehouse where they make everything you can think of out of fossils mined from the nearby rocks.  We got a lesson in Pre-cambrian archaeology during the tour.  Again, we would have stocked up on souvenirs if we could have carried them with us. 

Mohammed and I appreciating the blue skies.

The canyon.

Lunch at Mohammed's house.  That is the dynamic duo, Johanna and Emilie, our new BFFs.

Josh is chiseling rock away from fossil.

We finally arrived at our destination, a town called Merzouga, which was only about 20 km from the Algerian border.  We were to ride into the heart of the desert on camels and stay overnight in a traditional Bedouin tent city.  But as I hinted at earlier, Chloe is in charge of that part of the story.  So without further ado…

Chloe:  Riding a camel through the Sahara Desert is the most amazing experience I have ever had.  After a long drive, we arrived at the edge of the desert.  When we got out of the car, we all saw the majestic camels sitting peacefully in a row. We all looked at them longingly waiting to mount, wondering which camel would be ours.  Mine was particularly fuzzy which I liked. When I got on my camel, I felt just how much you get jostled around when the camel stands up.  It doesn’t rise all at once, but first stands with its back legs lurching you forwards and then its front legs, evening you out. It almost feels like riding on a living and breathing rollercoaster. Just to add to that fact, once they started walking it was a bit jolty. I rode for a while, gripping on tightly to the bar in front of me worried that I might fall off. But eventually, I got into rhythm with the camel, and didn’t need to hold on, even when we were going down hill. After a while we decided to name our camels. My brother named his Bobby, for no particular reason. My dad named his Kasbah because of the amazing Kasbah we had seen the day before. The two Swedish women that we were travelling with named their camels Scarface and Black Beauty. One had lots of scars and the other was completely black. My mom named hers Turban because he was wearing a turban earlier, and I named mine Fuzzel because he was a very fuzzy camel.

I loved watching the beautiful sand dunes all around us with the amazing color contrast. The orange dunes paired with the bright blue sky seemed too perfect to be real.  About an hour and a half later we arrived at the campsite, dismounted our camels and explored the campsite. It was made up of many different rooms.  One for cooking, one for eating, three for sleeping, and one large open area in the middle for sitting. Soon after we arrived it was time to go and watch the sunset. We started walking up the sand dunes, and discovered it was much more difficult than it appeared when the camels did it. When we finally arrived at the top, and were waiting for the sunset, Josh decided to roll back down the hill completely covering himself in sand. I almost followed him until I thought about the hike back up, and that the campsite had no showers to de-sand myself. So instead I decided I would slide down on my butt after the sunset. That way I wouldn’t get as sandy, and I wouldn’t have to walk back up. When the sun set the sky turned a beautiful pinkish purple around the edges, while the rest of the sky was still blue.

After the sunset, we were served a lovely meal of couscous, chicken, veggies and potato.  Once we finished dinner, we all headed to the middle of the camp to play drums, tell jokes, and look at the stars.  First, we all played the drums, which kind of failed except for the guides, who had played many times before. It was still fun trying though. Next we looked at the stars, which were very bright, due to the fact that there were no lights on the ground to block them out. We found three different constellations, and made up two of our own (the camel, and the puny dipper). Then we told jokes many of which were from the guides and were pretty funny. After we had finished, we all went off to bed, to get ready for the day ahead. When we woke up the next morning at 5am, you could still see the stars. As we were riding the camels back, to the car, we watched the sky change from a dark blue to a purple and then a light blue. When we had walked about half way, we stopped to watch the sunrise. Soon enough we were leaving the desert, and saying goodbye to our camels. I still miss Fuzzel.

Haven't seen one of these in Marin.

Josh, Johanna, Emilie, Carol, Chloe and yours truly, in that order.

It was cooler when I did it.

No words... 

Beach without the ocean.

Our tent in the desert.  You can see the sand at the left wall.

Fuzzel. 

Just after sunrise, so the shadows were pretty sweet.  

Steve:  So there you have it.  Chloe wasn’t exaggerating when she said it was the best experience of her life.  She really feels that way.  It was pretty darn awesome, I have to admit.  The ride back was long but epic.  When we finally had to say goodbye to our traveling companions, it was nearly a teary-eyed one.  We had shared so much in so little time that we all felt like old friends.  But all good things must come to an end.  And so do mediocre things, like, say, this blog post…

Answer to joke #5: Duh!  The camel.  He was stuck in the fridge.

These were the jokes told that magical night in the desert. We told jokes three and four.  We heard both of them for the first time at “Mike Wyzowski’s Monster’s Inc. School of Humor” attraction at Disneyworld.  The other three jokes were provided by our Bedouin hosts.  The kids were in stitches.  Laughter is always better in the good ‘ole outdoors.

Catch you later!  Next edition in Europe!