Hello there, my friends! I hope you've all had a fabulous week. What are your weekend plans? I will be quite busy writing my last Morocco blog posts, doing some stuff around the house and packing for my annual family Christmas vaca. As each year I'm heading back home to Germany for a week to spend Christmas with my family. I just love spending the holidays with them, all cozy together.
Before heading off into the weekend I wanted to publish this post about our exciting and unforgettable trip to the Sahara desert. As you can tell from the first photo we had lots of fun and made great memories in the middle of the Sahara!
Trip from Fez to Marrakech
We booked a three-day tour from Fez to Marrakech in advance, a couple of weeks before our trip, as these kind of tours are fully booked pretty quickly and we didn't wanna take any risk. We had booked a tour with Mandala Tours which included private transport for three full days with several stops at cool places to see, dromedary rides, one night at a desert camp and another at a beautiful riad, as well as breakfast and dinner at each accommodation. We were super happy with Mandala Tours. The driver was friendly and always punctual, and we had our own comfortable and modern van for eight persons so we could always go together. Plus, the accommodations were great and the food there was good.
Desert Tour
On our third day in Morocco our Mandala Tours driver picked us up in Fez early in the morning and we drove all the way down to a place called Merzouga where he left us at Hotel Kasbah Mohayut. We quickly dropped our luggage there, packed our backpacks for the night and headed off to the beginning of the desert where our dromedaries were waiting for us. We had so much fun getting on the dromedaries and going on a ride through the desert to our camp. The sun was setting so it all looked really magical, like in a movie. We had the whole desert for ourselves because there were only four more people going with us. Even though after 90 minutes of dromedary excursion our butts and legs hurt a bit I fully enjoyed the experience. The desert surely is a mystical place, so tranquil and endless. I have so much respect for nature when traveling and being surrounded by vast, untouched landscapes. It makes me feel so small and limited and all problems we have so unimportant. In my opinion it's super important to go out and experience nature every so often to bond with our origins and get a different perspective on life.
At the desert camp we were greeted by a group of young men with hot Moroccan tea and cookies. After leaving our stuff at the tent (my boyfriend and I had one all for ourselves) we all met in the communal tent where we enjoyed a yummy and very abundant typical Moroccan dinner with the other camp guests. There were about 15 more people from Germany, Spain and other countries so it was a small and nice group. Before going to sleep we all gathered at a camp fire where the guys who run the camp sang Berber songs for us and we all danced together, chatted and watched the stars. The night sky in the desert really is incredible!
Waking up in the Desert
After a freezing cold night in the desert we got up around 7.30 am to watch the sun rise over the sand dunes. Such a beautiful sight and unique experience! Unfortunately we had to get back to the hotel where our driver was waiting for us early to have breakfast and take a shower before continuing our road trip. So after enjoying a quiet hour watching the sunrise we ran down the sand dunes and got on our dromedaries to head back to the hotel. After another fun dromedary excursion we arrived at the hotel where we got a room to be able to shower and were served delicious Morrocan breakfast consisting of eggs, olives, bread, pastries, fruit and more. The Hotel Kasbah Mohayut was so pretty, I would have totally stayed there the whole day to relax and enjoy the views of the desert from their roof terrace. Before leaving Merzouga, some of us, including me, went on another half-hour ride through the desert, this time in a jeep, which was super fun! It was like a rollercoaster ride, up and down the dunes, we were laughing and screaming so hard, haha. Around noon we eventually left the hotel and continued our trip to Ouarzazate and Marrakech. I will show you some pics of our road trip in the next post, so don't forget to stop by my blog again soon :)
