Day 9 - Merzouga

Awoke this morning surrounded by sand dunes. Given that all we could see last night was darkness, we were all rather taken aback when we ventured outside this morning. Its not often you sit in the sun eating breakfast with a 150m sand dune next door.

Good morning Merzouga (Photo: Mills)

Spent the morning generally lazing around, enjoying the sun and the heat that it brings. Played a bit of poker before heading out with Tim F to climb the nearest dune. I don't think the auberge operators liked this course of action very much because they couldn't charge us for any of these activities.

Almost at the top (Photo: Mills)

Climbing the dune wasn't as hard as it had looked. The view from the top was of course of more dunes, but was well worth the effort. The shapes of the dunes and the changing perspectives of the ripples and undulating of the dunes was an awesome sight. It was a sight that was impossible to capture adequately on my camera, though as it turns out my camera lens and lens cover were more than adequate for capturing and trapping sand.

I know we left the hotel somewhere around here (Photo: Mills)

When we got back to the auberge a concentrated effort was made to sell us an overnight camel trek, soon due to leave. They wanted DH500 which was little more than extortion. We countered with DH300 and to no great surprise settled on DH400, though we would have to wait till the next days trip. I know that in real terms the difference is only a couple of quid but there is a principle involved. In the end I'm glad we didn't go on this particular trek, as I can see where they set up camp from the roof of our building - hardly a trek deep into the dunes.

Dinner tonight was slightly tarnished by hippy drums. You can call them traditional Berber drums, but in some contexts that are still hippy drums, especially when a large part of the audience is made up of pot-smoking hippies.