Trips

Thurs., 2/10/11 - Sahara Desert

This morning some of the group (including Gale) got up before dawn – it was probably around 40 deg. – to go up to the top of the nearby hill to see the sunrise. Marge stayed under the warm blankets and felt quite smug when it turned out to be only an average sunrise.

Waiting for the sunrise

Sunrise

After a delicious breakfast of fried bread and Morocco omelet, we walked for 45 minutes across part of the desert over rocky flat terrain to a nomad's tent-home.

Animals do live in the desert. This is the burrow of a fennec fox

Walking across the desert - glad someone knows where we are going!

Nomad tent and storehouse

Nomad tent

The grandmother is sponsored by OAT - given money to have us visit her tent. She sat on the floor carding camel and goat wool into yarn to weave into material for her tent. Her son herds five camels that belong to someone else. They also have some goats. OAT has helped her have an adobe structure to use for the family during sandstorms and to store dry food and water. She bakes bread in an adobe dome oven on pebbles on a slab of iron. She uses a donkey to go to a well maybe a mile away to get drinking water and to wash clothes.

We stopped to look into two more nomad tents. They are relatives of the first family. These men work in the nearby quarry. It seems a very simple but tough life.

Nomad tent

Nomad family

Clever tent support

Family's goat herd - I wonder what they are eating!

Bread oven

Storehouse and protection during sandstorms

Nomad tent

Carding wool

Storehouse/sandstorm protection

Nomad tent

At the well, which was quite far from any of the tents, we saw the two-bucket pulley system, which brings water up from about 15 feet deep. As one bucket comes up the other one goes down. The buckets are made locally out of car or truck tires. Water is hauled up from the well and poured into a trough for camels and goats to drink. The washing stones were nearby and scrub bushes were the drying racks.

Well

Clothes washing rock

Drying rack - bushes

We drove farther toward the mountains that surround this desert area and looked at the ruins of a 1909 French prison. Algerian rebels were kept here by the French.

We had a pit stop and lecture at the Oasis El Mharech auberge (inn). This area is used for jeep and dirt bike rallies, hence the inn.

Across the desert

Wind formed features on the hills

Ruins of French prison

Oasis El Mharech

We drove back to our camp for lunch - another bumpy, rough jeep ride - had a two-hour rest, and then took an hour walk on the dunes. Some of the sand was hard surface, where water would accumulate in rain and some was like soft beach sand. It was totally quiet and peaceful.

Walking in the dunes

Waiting for the sunset

Sunset

Fri., 2/11/11 - Sahara Camp to Tineghir

This morning the 42° in our tent didn't seem as cold as yesterday. We are either getting used to it or learning to deal with our heavy, heavy blankets and hot water bottles more effectively.

After a breakfast of the same yummy frittata/omelet and another donut like fried bread, we loaded the jeeps with our bags and set off to walk west across the desert for our morning exercise.

Loading up

Hiking across the desert again

After about 40 minutes we got in the jeeps and rode to a Berber cemetery in the outskirts of Fezzou village. In a city Moslems are buried in a tomb of marble or stone. In villages the graves are just marked with a mound of dirt and a stone stuck in the ground at the head and foot. Some of the stones were close together indicating a child's burial. There are no names identifying the graves but a written registry is kept. Every time someone comes to visit a grave, they add a stone to the grave or put it in a can on the grave.

Berber cemetery

Our next stop was at a Berber farm in this semi-Saharan desert area. The farmers use a diesel pump to pull up water from the water table and run it through PVC pipe and ditches to water the small crop patches that measured about 9 x 12 feet. They grow mint (for tea), carrots, henna, fava beans, alfalfa (that is cut every 20 days and grows all year), wheat, onion, cumin, and rosemary. Interspersed between the plots are date, pomegranate, apple, fig, apricot, and almond trees. The two extended families that work this farm eat what they need and sell the rest at the village market in Alnif.

Small plots

Diesel pump for irrigation

Henna

Water has a high salt content

Almond blossom

Barrier to keep out drifting sand

On the way to Tineghir we stopped for a panoramic view across to the High Atlas Mountains. They do not have snow. We looked out for miles and saw at least three good-sized towns.

High Atlas in the distance

Tineghir Valley farm plots

Tineghir from hotel room

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