MA5: Erg Chegaga
As I have alluded to in our last blog, we did an excursion into the “real” Sahara Desert, to Erg Chegaga. No, that is not the name of yet another Star Wars character, but simply means “Dune Chegaga” (actually, erg = “sea of sand”, but I hope you will allow me to call it a dune).
We spoke to our host Said at the M’hamid campsite, and we agreed on a one-night trip including a stop at an oasis followed by an overnight stay at the camp. When offered “with camel ride?”, we respectfully declined — let’s face it, no camel wants to carry us German tourists given the choice, so why force them to?
Our driver arrived perfectly on time (is he German?!) to pick us up and immediately revealed “no English”. Hmm, okay. But then “no French”. Well, this could get interesting in terms of communication, given we’ll be in the same car for a couple of hours, but we stayed optimistic — there are translation apps, after all, and they do support Arabic.
Once we had driven off, however, our creeping suspicions were confirmed: it would be a very, very quiet drive. What a shame, as these excursions live off the stories and information you get from your guide.
Instead of interesting insights or funny anecdotes, our driver remained quiet. Until…
“YOU OK? BACK OK? ALL OK?” was shouted in our direction with an American Psycho-style facial expression, which caught me completely off guard the first time and made me jump a little. Quickly, we confirmed “all OK” (in <100 decibels) to reassure him he was doing a fantastic job.
That sorted, he turned to the music, put on “Mr. Saxobeat” by Alexandra Stan, and confirmed “SAHARA MUSIC!” followed by the same American Psycho smile: “YOU LIKE?”. Me — still figuring out how I ended up in a car in the desert listening to what my brain translated into “Mr. sexy beat” — again quickly confirmed “love it!” (once again making sure not to surpass 100 decibels, in stark contrast to our guide).
Luckily, it turned out that our driver was actually willing to provide information, and we ended up “chatting” with a translation app. He stopped at a few interesting points. For example, we were very surprised to see that multiple wells had been installed, along with a sort of water channel/gutter giving all animals easy access to water.
The oasis was yet another disappointment. Probably because of our own (baseless) expectations. When we heard “oasis”, we immediately thought of lush green landscapes with many healthy trees and a rather large body of water.
Instead, we stood by a 1m by 1m pond, a couple of almost dying palm trees, and lots of sand. Hardly an oasis by our “standards”.
Our guide made up for the disappointment with a fantastic lunch. The food tasted great, and there was plenty of it — it was challenging to finish it all, which is saying a lot for those who know us.
With full bellies, Kathrin decided to try and feed the last piece of bread to the donkeys, but they weren’t exactly ecstatic — maybe they had been baited like this once too often?
On we drove to the next (and final) stop: our night camp at the foot of Erg Chegaga, and WOW, what a sight that dune is.
The camp itself was very nicely arranged, and our “tent” was okay for one night. We were happy we didn’t need a shower, as the water pressure was so low that I would have been faster cleaning myself with my own tears — but as I said, no shower needed, so we didn’t care. There were about 16 other tourists, most of them part of a Norwegian travel group. It was a good number of people.
We immediately wandered off into the desert, up the dunes, and just took in the scenery. It was such an otherworldly experience and worth every penny.
After the initial walk, we returned to camp for dinner. We didn’t expect two full meals and this time really struggled to eat it all. We were served tagine, salad, bread, and… spaghetti with tomato sauce?! We believe that was the substitute for meat, as only two tables were served this special, original Moroccan dish.
To top it all off there was a cat (as a rule in Morocco, there is always a cat!) begging for food making its rounds. Kathrin offered some pasta which disappeared instantaneously. Guess it was an Italian cat.
After dinner, it was announced there would be a bonfire and music. We, however, had other plans. I wanted to try my luck at interval photography to get those tasty star trails over the desert (spoiler: I screwed it up), and we just wanted to take in the scenery by ourselves rather than stare at a fire. That wasn’t what we came to the desert for.
I set up the interval shooting, and the camera told us it would take a good two hours to complete. Kathrin got a bit cold halfway through and wandered back to camp, while I stayed by the camera and stared at the incredible night sky a bit more.
Kathrin had a really interesting conversation with one of the hosts, who is a nomad, speaks a bunch of languages, and explained with a huge smile that this is what he loves to do. He gets to sleep under the stars, gets to meet people from all over the world, and learns new languages and cultures. Once again, we saw just how kind and open the Moroccan people are. Just wonderful.
About an hour later, I walked down MY personal dune and made it back to camp, only to find Kathrin trying to strangle the faucet for a few drops of water to wash her face. It was a fruitless endeavor, and we ended up using bottled water instead.
The night was okay — not because anything was wrong, it’s just always the first night in a new environment. A strange bed in a makeshift tent with sand floors in the Sahara takes a bit of getting used to.
We woke early, freshened up, and headed over for breakfast. We had just finished when our driver arrived to pick us up and bring us back to our beloved Wilma.
A few minutes after departure — I had forgotten about this part — “YOU OK? BACK OK? ALL OK?” filled the car, and I quickly responded that all was well. The drive back was a good two hours, and this ritual repeated every 20 minutes or so.
What an adventure! We wouldn’t have missed it for anything in the world, but we agreed it would have been much better if we’d shared a common language with the guide.