Day three- Sahara Desert

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Day three

More traveling inland to get to the Sahara!

We stop in the most beautiful place. Its inside this huge huge canyon. It was an oasis as well. Just imagine driving for hours on end with gray, orange, black, and all dim colors. Then all of a sudden you come across bright green palms trees and water and a whole village. We stopped for pictures at one oasis, then stopped for food at the next. We saw rock climbers on these huge walls of the canyon.

We were in the vans all day traveling and then reached a small city where we met up with the jeeps. We transferred all our stuff to the jeeps and hopped in with excitement.

We drove around the city for a bit then all of a sudden just went off the road. The driver pointed out the orange sand dunes in the distance and told us that’s where we were headed. SO COOL!

We were all in four jeeps, and they were criss-crossing and circling each other it was crazy. We were all happy and singing and bouncing around nonetheless. It was a rough ride and Cody got sick. Our driver was really cool and was playing good music for us. All the drivers were cool.

We stopped off in front of the dunes and took some pictures.

Back to the vans, we drove for a while longer till we reached our tents that we’d be staying in. We dropped our stuff off and naturally Miguel started climbing the dunes. We did, along with many of the local kids who wanted to hang out with us. They were really cool. It was beautiful there. Miles and miles of these orange sand dunes. They said that off into the distance was Nigeria.

One of the local kids told me to sit down on one of the dunes. I did and he grabbed my feet and pulled me all the way down the dune. He called it “skiing.” It was so much fun.

We went back to our tents and then back into the vans to go to the hotel for dinner. It’s a complex I think, a hotel and then they set up the camping for people who chose to do so. So in the hotel we hung out for a bit after dinner and played cards and drank tea. Supposedly Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie go to this particular hotel too.

When we got back to the tents it was dark and we only had candles to light our tent. They set up a bonfire in the middle which was cool. One of the guys from the hotel was riding a four wheeler in the dunes and me and Nadine asked him for a ride so we did. It was so crazy at night. They were so nice to us and it was a really cool experience.

Later we put the fire out and watched the stars. They were unbelievable. It was out of a movie how awesome they were. We also must’ve seen about 20 to 30 shooting stars. Nadine saw her first shooting star and was so excited about it. We also took the flashlight and my camera and wrote in the dark with the flashlight and the camera. It was awesome.

Trying to fall asleep was difficult. A bunch of the group was going around the tents and scaring us. Jamie was a mess. I wasn’t too much better. All in good fun though.

We have to wake up tomorrow at 4 to ride the camels and see the sunrise on top of the dunes!

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