Sana Saidia! (Happy New Year!)

It’s a new year and it started with a bang! I rang it in with a
fabulous new years trek in Merzouga Morocco, probably the closest that
I will ever get to the Algerian border (without actually going to
Algeria). After arriving in the town of Erfoud, we took a four by four
vehicle out to the Erg Cherbi (Cherbi sand dune). Once we reached the
border of the dunes, we each got our own camel and took an exciting,
but slightly uncomfortable ride, out to our campsite.
After two hours of riding out on a camel, we slowly ascended the
dunes, leaving the land of rocky desert and moving into the land of
endless sand. We were surrounded by sand dunes (with the distant
mountains of Alergia in our view). It appeared that we were in an
endless desert of dunes.

When we arrived at our campsite, we were convinently located under the
tallest sand dune. How high was the dune? I don’t know, but it
took at least 45 minutes of hands in the sand crawling/mock-rock
climbing up a wall of continuously sliding sand. I am officially out
of shape, but climbing that sand dune was very empowering and made me
realize that I may be “Peace Corps out of shape”, but I’m still
walking/biking several kilometers each day. I could not have been happier to reach the top of the dune and be rewarded with two shoes full of sand and dozens of beetles (like the ones seen in the desert scenes from Aladdin)

After climbing the sand dune, we were all rewarded by watching the
sunset turn the desert into a melting pot of oranges and red. Later
that night, we ate a great Moroccan tajine and settled into a food
coma (accompanied by exhaustion from climbing the dunes) and ended the
nights with celebratory fireworks, viewed from around the campfire.
After a good night’s sleep (under, what seemed like, billions of
starts) we woke up to a Moroccan breakfest (including fresh olives and
apricot jam). We mozzied back to Merzouga via camels (we were not as
excited to mount the camels as we were the day before) and then said
our goodbyes.
It was a memorable beginning to the new year and couldn’t have thought
of a better way to start my first full year in Morocco. So…Bonne
Annee, Sana Saidia, and Happy New Years in all of the languages of
Morocco!