Morocco
After seeing the photos from Jen and me in Morocco Steve said he would really like to do the Sahara desert trip and I don’t take much encouraging to take a holiday, so finding a five day trip off we went. I’ve always been terrified of heights and was quite impressed with myself having survived the first trip over the Atlas mountains I didn’t expect to be doing it again quite so soon. 
It’s an amazing trip with so much spectacular changing scenery between Marrakech and the Sahara Desert but its a long way to travel. There were 9 of us plus the driver. Three French 2 Japanese a German a Greek and us we made several stops on the way, stayed overnight at Dades gorge and visted Todra Gorge.
Arriving at the Desert in time to ride the camels into the sunset. Two hours later we arrived at camp, a berber tent, It must have been a full moon last time but this time it wasn’t, it was complete darkness with an absolute mass of really bright stars, sand boarding by torch light was interesting. Some people chose to sleep under the stars but having seen the very large beetles that were around and the thought of the odd scorpion creeping up I opted for the tent. The sunrise was amazing but just at that point my camera refused to work, sand in the lens I think. We rode the camels back through the dunes. The guide walks at the front leading the first camel and all the rest are tied to each other, there were three others behind mine. My camel chewed on the rope tying him to one in front and managed to untie it three times. Although each time he did this he just stood still until the guide came running back and tied him up again
. I suppose it would have been quite a site if he had taken off into the distance taking the other three with him. It was then a ten hour trip from the Sahara back to Marrakech. After all the travelling and the not always so comfortable Backpacker guest houses I was quite tired and achy on Saturday so I decided to try a Hammam. There are many Hammams in Morocco which are like public bathing places. We decided to book one in a hotel. Steve was slightly alarmed but having persuaded him to take his swimwear (I had my Bikini) we gave it a go and I would certainly recommend it after being washed down with blacksoap and then having buckets of water thrown over me in what was like a tiled sauna room I was then scrubbed with a glove that felt like a brillo pad, I definitely have less skin now. This was followed by a lovely relaxing massage and I certainly felt so much better after it and all for £20.
