Day 26: Rest Day in Hassilabied

March 13, 2023

A 6 hour tour of the desert

“And now here is my secret, a very simple secret: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.” The fox says to The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery. We’ve had a 6 hour tour in the desert and was not lost, we did end seeing the plane that was used in filming the movie, The Little Prince. This is Rachel’s favorite book.

Well, after complaining about begging kids and “who would spoil them like this” earlier we became part of the problem today. Maybe. The Sahara Desert trip came together without much effort on our part. A relative of the hotel owner came over last night and we agreed on a price of 1000 Dirham, about $100 for a six hour trip starting at about 2:00 pm and ending at dark. Sahli, the French-Moroccan guy and us will each pay a third of that, sounds like a good deal. Sahli later said he had explored tours in the morning in Merzouga and was told 2 hours for 30Eu.

We start the morning with a nice breakfast. Patrick walks over to the camel parking area and gets some nice early morning shots of the camels with the sand dunes behind. Quite a few tourists have taken sunrise camel trips this morning. Other than that we can’t say we did much else, except go downtown Hassilabied to have lunch at a café. There is not much here, but the food is good and cheap. We are glad we did not continue on to Merzouga.

Breakfast with Sahli and the hotel owner.

The camel parking area early in the morning.

A steady stream of caravans headed to Merzouga.

Promptly at 2:00pm Ali shows up with a nice Mitsubishi Pajero. You never know what you are going to get on “budget” tours, but this is certainly better than expected. We are going to need the 4WD.

We leave town headed west to a dried-up lakebed. Driving across the desert, sometimes on dirt roads, sometimes on tracks, and sometimes on no roads at all we come over a ridge and see the lake shimmering ahead of us. It is a mirage, there is no water, in fact there has not been water for six or seven years.

We then cut back towards the paved road, but instead of getting on it we just cross into the desert on the other side. In a small village Ali takes us to a house where they have two pet desert foxes. They have been hand raised by people but are still very skittish. Next stop is a store for a big bag of candy to hand out to the nomad kids later. We give each other a look…..

We skirt the sandhills and do some pretty serious deep loose sand 4WD driving. Momentum is everything and Ali keeps the pedal down. We zoom up and down steep inclines and around loose sand curves. Next stop is Khamlin village, foot of the Erg Chibbi and door to the great Saharan Desert. We stop at the family home Zaid Onjeaa who started the preservation of this music from descendants of Western African slaves Gnaoua and Berber. Nomads until the 50s and 60s, they are making a pretty good living at entertaining tourists with driving African music.

The group Les Pigeons du Sable starts with Drums, very loud metal castanets like instruments (Qaraqib), and even an electric string instrument (the amp is hidden behind a curtain). There are maybe two dozen musicians that take turns performing for tourist groups that are coming and going. We are served tea and enjoy the music for a while. Ali told us earlier to let him take care of the tips along the way.

A boy in training, he got up and danced with the group really getting into it, and now playing smaller versions of the Qaraqib

Next stop, after some more bumpy and deep sand driving is an abandoned French village at the foot of a mine that is still active. Lead was mined here at one time, later switching to Vanadium and now a light colored clear mineral that we don’t get the name of. We do have a sample though.

A cemetery in the desert. Ali explains Muslims do not like to put names or dates on gravestones. His grandmother is buried in this place but he does not know where his mother was buried.

We are now on the south side of the Erg-Chebbi dunes and start making our way up the east side of the dunes. On our left is the sand, on the right a flattish rock desert with an escarpment on the horizon. The top of the escarpment is Algeria. Morocco and Algeria don’t have very good relations and there is a string of military posts.

We stop at a couple of view points and end up at a spread-out nomad village. Spread over the rocky plain are groups of huts and nomad tents. Only the women and children are home, the men are herding the goats, sheep and camels to wherever there is food. We stop several times Ali and Sahli hand out candy to the kids. We don’t partake, but of course we are part of this now. We still think it is wrong to turn these kids into beggars and in the process ruin their dental health. But on the other hand, we could sit on our high horses and just drive through here as if in a zoo without giving them anything. At least now the kids have a smile on their faces and are very happy with the candy. And Ali enjoys doing this. Tough call.

We stop at a nomad tent where Ali seems to know the woman who is weaving a cloth sitting in the shade. While we take pictures she fixes us a pot of tea and we sit inside the camel wool tent enjoying another cuppa. We assume Ali gives her something when we leave. We keep heading north towards a rock outcropping where we spent some time hunting for fossils. This once was the bottom of an ocean and many, many fossils are found here. We find a few small ones, also some interesting black little pebbles that are too heavy to be just rock.

The sun is starting to go down by now and we make our way into some low sand dunes where we park and hike up a slightly higher dune for a nice view over the surrounding hills. The low light creates nice shadows over the curving ridge lines. We sit there until the sun is gone, then race towards some acacia trees for some more photos with a colored sky back ground.

Ali has one more destination on his sleeve. “Excuse my driving I have one more place,” Ali says racing across desert roads as it starts to get darker. He takes us to the little airplane that was used in the movie “The little prince”. We get there just in time to get some decent pictures.

Plane in the filming of The Little Prince

It is eight o’clock when we get back. Ali went out of his way to give us a great experience today. We pay him and give him a tip for his efforts. We had not arranged for dinner and Ali even called ahead for us so dinner is ready shortly thereafter; we are fed a very nice chicken brochette dinner. We say goodbye to Sahli and exchange emails in order to share pictures of the day

A picture on the wall of our hotel that shows the tour

Some of the rocks we found and will be carrying frome here. The three larger black ones are a volcanic stone, not quite obsidian with interesting lines. Not sure if these are fossils. The large bone in the middle is from a fish, the two little black dots also seem volcanic and heavier than just rock. Then two small snail fossils on the right. The little white stone was from the mine.

Tomorrow back on the road, eight days to Fez.

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Lucy MartinThe desert is so beautiful and mesmerizing.
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