The next day our gallant little minibus pointed its nose towards the desert and we piled on board if only because the alternative was to be abandoned in rural Morocco.
The sun beat down but the A/C did a noble job of ensuring we were merely hot instead of boiled in our own fat. Our destination was Zagora a town touted as being on the edge of the desert. Actually the term “edge of the desert” turned out to be a reasonably fluid one. We would reach a few other towns on the edge of the desert as well before we actually hit the desert.
But first, Hollywood! Or at least the hot, dry Moroccan equivalent. We stopped at a movie studio along the way where we had the option of doing a tour. Those who didn’t take the tour were reduced to sitting in the shade drinking coffee while they waited for their comrade’s return. It wasn’t bad coffee either.
Other things happened along the way, I vaguely recall a library stuffed with ancient books and an Islamic school but I was gobbling Advil like tic tacs by this stage and was barely aware of the fact that we were moving at all.
On arrival in Zagora our guide informed us that due to the heat (about 40 degrees) we would put off the walk among the date palms until the cool of the morning. Those of us who could barely walk at all greeted this news with delight and promptly went to bed.
The next day however there was no avoiding the palm trees (literally they were everywhere) and off we set to learn about all things date. Many interesting facts were learnt about date palms by those capable of paying attention. For the others there was just an awareness of lots of trees and some confused impression that the date farmers had to get somewhat more intimately involved in their charges sex lives than I would have expected.
Once our knowledge of dates had been improved to a disturbing level we piled back onto the bus and headed towards the desert. No more “on the edge of” stuff for us, now we were aiming at dunes and camels etc. We tiered our journey so that we arrived in the late afternoon when things had begun to cool down a bit ie it was merely very hot as opposed to actually boiling your eyeballs in their sockets.
Four wheel drives would take us to our camp where four legged camels awaited.
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