{"id":39,"date":"2012-08-02T16:14:32","date_gmt":"2012-08-02T16:14:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.luc.edu\/eyeonthearabworld\/?p=39"},"modified":"2012-08-02T16:14:32","modified_gmt":"2012-08-02T16:14:32","slug":"moroccos-slice-of-sahara","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.luc.edu\/eyeonthearabworld\/?p=39","title":{"rendered":"Morocco’s Slice of Sahara"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Last weekend was an arduous journey to reach the little town of Merzouga near the dune sea named Erg Chebbi.\u00a0 The first leg of our journey was a train ride to Meknes (which took two extra hours because our train caught fire. Classic Morocco), followed by a nine-hour bus ride.\u00a0 We didn\u2019t have a hotel Friday or Sunday night\u2014we just slept on the bus.<\/p>\n

As soon as we reached the town I picked out a massive sand dune to climb.\u00a0 What I thought would be a forty minute or so trip took over two hours and I realized all my perceptions of distance, size, and even angles were pretty unreliable looking at pure sand.\u00a0 Ramadan began Saturday so if the Saharan heat didn\u2019t keep people inside their inability to drink water did and I was lucky to find a store open to buy some life-giving water, though I had to haul it back to the hotel before drinking any so as not to offend anyone fasting.\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

We set out on our camels in the evening for a two-hour ride to our camp.\u00a0 Camels are like horses except raised an extra foot or so and with a totally unmanageable sway, forcing me to hold on or fall off.\u00a0 The camp was behind another massive sand dune to protect it from the wind, and there we climbed the nearby dunes and chatted with our guides before dinner.\u00a0 We couldn\u2019t practice our Arabic with them because they were Berbers (a technically politically incorrect term, but you can tell THEM that) and didn\u2019t speak even the Moroccan dialect.\u00a0 Luckily after working in the tourism industry for only a few years they\u2019d picked up a considerable amount of English.\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Our guides recalled their visits to cities with distaste, and often repeated the phrase \u201cthe desert is my dream\u201d.\u00a0 In the day, sunlight makes the landscape of flawless dunes seem a distortion of reality, and at night the stars are memorizing. \u00a0At four thirty the next morning my bud Brandon and I hoofed it up to the top of the massive dune adjacent to our camp.\u00a0 We reached the top after about half an hour with just enough time for a rest before sunrise.\u00a0 It was insane.\u00a0 I don\u2019t know if the desert is unspeakably beautiful, or it was just new to me.\u00a0 All I can say is \u201cthe desert is my dream\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last weekend was an arduous journey to reach the little town of Merzouga near the dune sea named Erg Chebbi.\u00a0 The first leg of our journey was a train ride to Meknes (which took two extra hours because our train caught fire. Classic Morocco), followed by a nine-hour bus ride.\u00a0 We didn\u2019t have a hotel […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-39","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.luc.edu\/eyeonthearabworld\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.luc.edu\/eyeonthearabworld\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.luc.edu\/eyeonthearabworld\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.luc.edu\/eyeonthearabworld\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.luc.edu\/eyeonthearabworld\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=39"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.luc.edu\/eyeonthearabworld\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.luc.edu\/eyeonthearabworld\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=39"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.luc.edu\/eyeonthearabworld\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=39"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.luc.edu\/eyeonthearabworld\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=39"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}