Atlas Mountains and Sahara Desert

We booked a tour to drive through the Atlas mountains, see some Kasbahs, and ride camels into the Sahara Desert to camp in the dunes. We generally don’t go for tours, but it took way less planning and logistics while we’re busy working on other things. Overall, we’re glad we did it to save the time. It was a ton of driving (like 20 hours over 3 days), but that meant we got to see the entire width of Morocco. Watching the changing scenery was one of the highlights!

Red, and some green, on the ocean-side of the Atlas mountains:Passing through the Atlas mountains and the Dades Gorge.We stopped near Ait Benhaddou for lunch. At this point, we had crossed the atlas mountains and there was much less green for the rest of the trip (outside of the cities). Ait Benhaddou, like the many kasbahs we saw, blends into the desert perfectly. The town near Ait Benhaddou has the snow capped Atlas Mountains as a backdrop. It was like 85 degrees in the sun where we were though.

“God Country King” in Arabic (our driver told us) written on the side of a hill. Pretty common sight in the desert. Stopped by a kasbah (castle) to wander around. The whole thing is made with bricks and mud plaster. It was kind of like a dark maze inside. Also, small doorways seem to be common in Morocco. I thought that the Sahara desert was pretty much all sand dunes. It’s not. It’s made up of a bunch of dune fields, with flat rock-sand-nothingness in between. We were headed to Erg Chebbi, one of the first dune fields in the Sahara when coming from the coast. The dune field is actually about the same size as the dune field in the Great Sand Dunes National Park in the USA. Further into the Sahara are much much larger dune fields.
On the way out, our guide took us to a tourist trap to get scarves, he insisted they were necessary to keep the sand out of our mouths and eyes, and sun off our necks. Not really necessary at all, turns out.

So legit.

We rode the camels for about an hour each way (into and out of the dunes). My camel was in heat or something and made the craziest gurgling noises when other groups of tourists’ camels came into sight and kept biting the butt of the camel in front.

Overall, it was a pretty neat experience and really glad we did it. Some people deciding to climb the highest dune for sunset. We did a small one nearby.
They had a snowboard for sandboarding. It was too dark to go to one of the bigger dunes, but still had a good time on the little ones nearby. The stars were pretty incredible at night. Also, it was freezing! It must have been a 50-60 degree temperature swing from hot to cold in about 7 hours. Luckily, our glamping tent had two beds with blankets, so we pilled them up high.Priscilla, getting on her camel for the ride back into town in the morning.

Subscribe to our blog!