Well, whaddya know…two posts in as many days! Must be something in the water…
Just thought I’d take a second to look in on what pics and photos I could share and realize that I haven’t been backing up any of my photos to my Google cloud or sharing them correctly with this account. That’s fun! But at least I have been saving all of them to a SD card on the phone, so all hope is not lost…Now I just have to figure how to get them from there to here, wherever that is and then get down to filling in the major gaps in the road show that has been this journey.
Currently I’m typing from the common room of the Berber Camp in M’Hamid, Morocco. A little town at the end of the paved road south of Zagora near the Algerian border. I doubt I would have found myself here if I hadn’t discovered that one of the CTM bus line ends in M’Hamid.
While I was in Marrakech; yep…was there for a bout a week, I met a couple German travelers who’d hitchhiked from Merzouga; a town on the Eastern edge of the country and home to Erg Chebbi…another spot I’d been and failed to inform most if not all who wonder what I’ve been up to. Listening to the tales of cross country adventure and their time in the desert, I felt the pull of the sandy expanse and the desire to ditch the hustle and bustle of the Medina.
Off to Booking.com and AirBnB I went in search of accommodations to match the twenty dollar bus fair to the end of the road. The bus would be arriving after nine p.m. and I wasn’t interested in wandering around the desert after dark so I found a place within walking distance, or an approximation of such, of the bus stop. Fortunately for me, the host/owner of the Auberge said that he would have someone waiting to pick me up at the station…much to my relief and quite the service considering the modest price of accommodations.
Once settled in at the Auberge La Palmeraie I met Katerine, a retired French national and Eilish, an twenty something Australian who’d watched an Instagram about a desert trek and decided to pack up and come have one hereself. Six days on foot, 15-20km per day and a couple boot-fulls of sandy blisters had me quickly rethinking just how desert-y adventurous I was willing to get! I was tempted…until I saw the blisters. Oversharing is a thing…
I ended up passing on the trekking adventure and opted for a camp on the outskirts of town. Far enough to be remote-ish but close enough for a leisurely stroll into town. That was April 11 and I have since re-upped on my reserveration/booking three times now.
I’m about out of juice on the iPad and I don’t think I’ve got the thousand words in me right now since I don’t have any of my pictures at the ready so I’ll wrap it for now and leave you all on the edges of your seats wondering about the spartan digs I’m enjoying on the edge of the desert.