The Desert was AWESOME!

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March 17, 2008

Today started off much earlier than normal. We woke up for good at 4:45 so we could go watch the sun rise. As much as it wasn’t fun to get up so early, I was soo happy when it finally came, because I went from one of the best night’s sleep to the worst in a day. The mattress was very uncomfortable, the pillows were hard, we had to share a blanket and sheet, and it was FREEZING! Even with my jeans, 2 pairs of socks, cami, tank top, long sleeve shirt, and sweatshirt (over my head, too) I was soooo COLD! I would wake up every couple hours trying to get warm and comfortable, but I never really succeeded.

When we went outside to go, you could see every star in the sky. It was amazing. I made my way in the pitch black to find a place to go to the bathroom. I’m pretty sure I tripped over multiple things though, so that made it rather interesting. When we were finally ready, we got onto our camels and headed for the dunes. We stopped and started to make our way to the top of a dune to watch the sunrise. It was so hard to climb those dunes though, especially given how steep and high they were. But we finally made it to see the beautiful sunrise over the plateau border of Morocco and Argelia. Then it was back on the camels to the campsite for breakfast before leaving on the 4x4’s. Most of the group I was with the first time, found our driver again for this time, and of course he didn’t let us down! We had to help a couple of the other 4x4’s though, because they got stuck. Clearly their drivers weren’t as experienced as ours!

We continued driving til we went to a little “market”, aka another rug store. Again, it was pretty, but we didn’t need to see another one since the rugs were all out of our price ranges for the most part. Then we met up with our fixed bus, and made our way to Hotel Cherguí again. We ate lunch, some people showered, and then we went outside to work on our tans til we left. We boarded our bus and started our 7 hour drive to Meknes. Along the way we stopped at an oasis that had a pretty background to take pictures. We finally made it to our hotel. We put our things in our rooms and headed to dinner. Afterwards, we showered. It was one of the best showers, because I finally felt clean after all the sand and dirt were washed away. Despite the really hard bed and pillow, I passed out. Time for some real sleep.

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