Our World Turns Brown

As for exploring, there were really only a couple of choices: we could checkout the toilet tent, which we did - the hole that had been dug looked fine for small bears, but we weren't sure it would suit our minders. We could also climb sand dunes. As we'd never done this before, this is how we passed the hour before dinner, along with visiting the camels to get to know them a bit better. Now they were off duty, they were happy to chat, and they really are fascinating creatures.


Climbing up the dunes was quite hard as the sand was so soft, but running down them, or somersaulting, when our momentum got too fast, was great fun, and the sand was soft that we couldn't hurt ourselves.


We had dinner out in the open sitting cross legged on mats. It was a fine dinner but not exactly authentic Moroccan cuisine; we had spaghetti bolognaise. This had a more to do with the cooking facilities available than the wish to give us familiar food. After dinner we did some star gazing with occasional interruptions from a camel spider which kept running over the mats and scaring some of our party.

When it was time for bed, as it was so warm, we decided not to join the others in the nomad tent, but to join our minders on top of a dune. We had only just settled down when the wind got up and started blowing sand everywhere. We were particularly exposed on top of our dune and had to go back down. We didn't want to disrupt our fellow travellers, so set our mats down just outside the nomad tent, using it to provide a bit of shelter from the wind.

Although it was still windy, this proved to be a good move, after the tent started to collapse - there was quite a 'plink' as the first of the wooden supports holding up the fabric was blown down. More followed, and the tent occupants had to rebuild the tent - more than once! We wrapped ourselves up in the touareg scarves to try and keep the flying sand at bay, and tried to get some sleep - it wasn't easy, especially as we were half expecting to be nuzzled by a hopping (because of the hobbling) camel.


We did get a bit of sleep, and when we woke up it was to find sand everywhere - our minders' sleeping bags were full of the stuff, but the worst part was finding that sand had got into our eyes.

More fun followed when we went to visit the toilet tent. We had to fish out a huge beetle which had fallen in, before we could use it.

After breakfast we struck camp and re-mounted our camels for the return journey. It had been quite an adventure and great fun.

Lots of love, George and Yorkie xxx