November 26-

On this trip, our final destination was the Sahara Desert.  We departed early in the morning from Rabat to Erfoud.  Erfoud is an oasis town in the Sahara Desert.  This town is called “The Gate to the Sahara”.  Erfoud is called this since it is close to the Erg Chebbi Dunes.  This was about a 10-hour trip so we had several rest stops along the way.  On the trip, I was able to see the Moroccan countryside and observe the living conditions here compared to in the cities.  I was honestly surprised that much of the countryside was very rundown compared to the cities.  On this part of the trip, we were scheduled to stop at the Ziz Valley to admire the view; however we were not able to stop because it was dark, so we put it off to our return trip.  When we arrived at the hotel in Erfoud, it was around 9 at night.  So we ate dinner and relaxed in the hotel and got ready for the rest of the trip tomorrow.

November 27-

We departed from the hotel in Erfoud early in the morning and began heading to Rissani, a town close to Erfoud.  Once we arrived in Rissani, we parked in front of mausoleum and got out of the buses we took there (the buses would meet us at our hotel later on since our bags were still onboard).  We then got in a group of jeeps that were waiting there and departed for Khamlia.  Khamlia is a small village that is close to Erg Chebbi.  Here we listened to Gnaoua music preformed by some of the villagers.  Gnaoua music is an ancient traditional African Islamic religious songs and rhythms.  This music is very popular in Morocco especially (and I enjoy it greatly as well).  After, we took the jeeps to the hotel, Hotel Timbukto and had lunch and rested.  In the late afternoon, we went on a camel ride.  I think that the camel ride was the highlight of my trip by far.  We rode the camels with our guides to a very tall dune.  Once there, we walked up the dune to peer out into the horizon and see the sunset.  It was absolutely beautiful.  On one side, you could the hotel and small villages, and on the other side, it was just miles and miles of nothing but sand.  After the sunset, we rode the camels back to the hotel and rested for the trip back to Rabat in the morning.

November 28-

We departed the hotel early in the morning in the jeeps to take us back to the mausoleum to rejoin the buses.  The trip back to Rabat was about 10-hours, however it stretched to be a little more.  One of the more memorable stops that we had was in Azrou.  The stop in Azrou was near a forest that is a large tourist attraction, to see wild Macaques in the forest.  I saved my banana from lunch to give to the monkeys.  After we stopped to see the Itto Valley and then the Ziz Valley.  They were both respectively beautiful.  Unfortunately, we were not able to admire them for long, since we were on a tighter schedule to get back to Rabat.  We then arrived back in Rabat around 9:30 at night.

I looked forward to this trip the entire semester and it did not disappoint at all.  By far, this was the best trip that I went on.  It was a great cultural and learning experience.