Lots a Sand

Former college roommate Amanda is visiting from New York and on her Morocco hit list for the two-week visit were desert and mountains. We’ve found it’s good to jump into the activities because two weeks can evaporate quickly and since Morocco is quite vast, you have to factor in significant travel time for certain sights. So, yesterday we set off on a three-day trek to rub noses with the sands of the Sahara. We took the same twisty Tizi-n-Tichka route south over the High Atlas to Ouarzazate that Sam and I had traveled several weeks ago, and then tacked on another 200 kilometers south to Zagora. The repeat trek was less harrowing for me than the first time we negotiated the pass. We wound through more fabulous rock formations in the Valee du Draa, narrowly avoiding the kids selling dates and gemstones that rushed the car as we tried to maneuver the switch-back curves. Amanda captured (though she told me photographers take umbrage with the word “capture” when referring to shots) the dramatic gorges with her new medium-format camera, which is very cool. So cool, in fact, that a middle-aged, fat and toothless French tourist (didn’t know the French ever came that way!) stopped her van and waddled over to us to ask about the camera. She explained that she has one like it and that she and her husband had recently bought a place in Ouarzazate. Go figure.

When we arrived in Zagora, we drove through the city’s main drag to the vast palmerie, or palm grove, where our small maison d’hotes is situated. No sooner had I put the car in park than we found ourselves swarmed by bedraggled boys needling us for pens or candy. I know I won’t win any points with this one, but kids can be scary and manipulative and these boys had a predatory air that creeped us out. Their desperation was palpable, like hungry hyenas circling a bloody carcass. Again, Morocco has made us examine the conflicting emotions of being defensive and rude to threatening youths and feeling like we’d like to reach out and help them however we might be able. Even though we’d been warned that tourists are often “accosted” in Zagora, it’s still discouraging to feel that we’ll never be more than a possible swindle to these kids. But we are just tourists passing through town and I guess we’re naïve to think any kind of meaningful, genuine interaction is possible. Fortunately, the inns portly bellman shuffled out in his slippers and shooed the boys away as he grabbed our bags and whisked us inside. Mint tea and cookies in the on the inn’s balcony, overlooking a quiet garden with palms, olive trees and a small pool, relieved some of our road fatigue.

We opted for dinner at the inn and had a brief nap before settling down to our table in the living room beside a cheery fire. A tagine of carrots and olives, the carrots almost caramelized in a buttery sauce, accompanied a tagine made of kefta meatballs in a tomato sauce. We’d skipped lunch and hungrily devoured both tagines to the bellman’s pleasure. Afterwards, up in our second-floor room, with windows overlooking the palmerie and a private balcony, we watched two episodes of Gray’s Anatomy on the laptop before falling asleep. There’s something absurd, yet comforting, about tuning into an American TV show when you’re in Morocco, miles from anywhere on the edge of the Sahara.


When we made it to the dunes, or rather THE dune at Tinfou, we were a bit underwhelmed. From a distance, the dune looked like a silly Disney-esque installation on the edge of a seemingly endless flat road. Beyond, a steep plateau stretched in a crescent across the horizon, as if just beyond its south face the Sahara might spread majestically before us. It also appeared as if the plateau was acting as a natural barrier, keeping the sands at bay. So how, we wondered, did the Tinfou dune come to be?



Well, on closer inspection the dune was quite giant, at least 300 feet high, and after refusing all of the pesky camel drivers, we hiked to the top and enjoyed a nice squat with a view of the dune’s sensual undulations. Were we hoping for a sea of curvaceous dunes? Sure. But with some clever photography and the right attitudes, we figured we could tell of a real Sahara sighting. It turns out that Merzuga and the massive Erg Chebbi dunes (where films like Lawrence of Arabia were shot) are 400 kilometers from Ouarzazate; since our trip already involves around 1200 kilometers, we made the emotional decision atop Tinfou to save Chebbi for another time. We’ll always have Tinfou.