The desert is alive!

We are now a few kilometers further southwest, we ended up in the dunes of the Sahara towards Merzouga, but we didn't end up directly in the town, but at a campsite on the outskirts or suburbs.

As soon as we arrived, the dunes directly in front of us grew and got higher and higher; the road signs everywhere said “Be careful of sand drifts!”. These are completely different experiences than at home, where we only know snowdrifts.

Hassan, our host, gave us a very friendly welcome, I can only confirm that the usual offers for desert safari on camel, quad bike and the like are of course invited here, no can also be accepted here, it is never intrusive. That would probably be different a few kilometers further into town.

We Northern Europeans have NO experience with the desert, because the little bit of sand we know from Italy or wherever is no comparison to what lies ahead of us, even the Dune du Pilat can't keep up, it's just unique from geography.

Today we went hiking in the desert, tomorrow we'll give in to the funny offer of going on a desert tour with our van. The hike showed that I'm not as fit as I thought, because I'm getting pretty tired up the dunes up to the ridge! Loki, on the other hand, was "sand-crazy and sand-horny", he felt like he was in the water and basking in the sand...

The torture was worth it, the view and the nature here are gigantic. We set off from the oasis into what felt like no man's land, but then a palm tree peeked out from behind a dune, a kind of desert grass was growing and other plants unexpectedly appeared. It was also really great to see the game tracks in the sand, because of course some of them looked like rabbits or foxes, but we weren't sure. The desert is so quiet that a sound carries over long distances, the campers at the foot of the dunes were initially clearly audible, then it was eerily quiet.

We then took a break on one of the higher dunes and simply enjoyed it. UNFORTUNATELY the quad bikes came with their noise and smell, but that's just tourism. We'll be there tomorrow, I'm excited!