It's been a couple of very relaxed days in Marrakesh since getting back from a 3 day/2 night excursion to the Sahara. I had to get up at 6am to have breakfast and then meet the guide at 7am to be taken to the tour van. Along the way we stopped at other hostels to pick up others also doing the tour. The first hostel we stopped a couple of guys joined who I would end up spending most of my time with. Ash from England and Rikard from Sweden. In total there was 14 of us on the tour, a group of English guys travelling together and a bunch of Germans.

The tour consisted of quite a lot of driving, probably about 8-10 hours or so per day. But there were a lot of stops for toilet breaks, lunch and photo opportunities. On the first day we drove through the Atlas mountains stopping for several photos along the way before getting to our first main destination which was Aït Benhaddou. This is an old Moroccan village with a real authentic desert arab kinda look to it. A lot of movies actually have been filmed there including Lawrence of Arabia, The Mummy, Gladiator and most recently it was used in Game of Thrones. We actually had two tour groups meet a new guide here to take us around and he told as it would be 20dh for a tour of the town or 25dh to tour the town and visit a family who lives there (not many live there anymore, and those that do don't even get running water or electricity). We all agreed to just go the 25dh as the difference is actually only 50c, but at the end of the tour our group was asked to pay 20dh and then ushered away back to the van, so so much for visited a family.

After this is was on to Ouarzazate for lunch. Driving into this city was actually quite nice. It looked much more upscale than Marrakech, and it was pretty clear why. Outside the town was a large movie studio, obviously used for when the big movies come to film at locations such as Aït Benhaddou, so it must bring a bit of money into the region. After lunch we did a tour of a small movie studio museum which was a massive waste of time, but thankfully only cost 15dh (I swear when I signed up to this tour everything was suppose to be included, but if there is one thing I've learned it's that Moroccans love to find ways to get as much money as possible from you). The museum was basically a bunch of cheap sets used for a bunch of religious movies (most with Joseph in the title) that no one has ever seen. Then it was back on the road again.

Now maybe if you're observant you will have noticed the title of this entry and are wondering what it's all about. Well Snickers and minerals became a bit of a running joke during the trip mostly due to Rickard who had a fondness of the peanutty chocolate goodness (Ash himself is actually allergic to nuts). So every stop we would try to get Snickers, but for some reason despite every shop having plenty of chocolate bars (Mars, Twix, etc) only one in every three or four actually had Snickers. As for minerals, that just became a bit of a joke about how every photo stop also just happened to have guys trying to flog shiny rocks. It only heightened the joke when on the second day we passed several fossil and mineral museums. No one ever did end up buying a rock during the trip.

The remainder of the first day was driving through Dades Gorge and stop down the bottom of it where our hotel was located. Again there were plenty of photo opportunities along the way. The hotel was actually really quite nice, somewhat better I think than most were expecting. Rooms were split into 3 and 4 beds so I shared a 3 bedroom with Ash and Rikard. The beds were nice and the room was warm. The shower on the other hand had pretty much no pressure at all, though it did have decent hot water. Dinner was included for the night which consisted of chicken and vegetable couscous. It was nothing amazing, pretty much the same as the free meal I had at my hostel the first night, but it was still nice. It had been a long day and none of us had any problem whatsoever in falling asleep that night. It was another early morning (7am) the next day.

Breakfast was also included and again was pretty much the same thing which was included at the hostel. The main destination today was Merzouga on the edge of the Sahara where we were to go on by camel (actually Dromedary). But of course it wasn't a straight shoot onto Merzouga, there were plenty of stops along the way, some for photos, other for mini excursions. One in particular took us around a small town with narrow windy roads and up to what they called a castle. It was really just a single little stone building on a hill. The real reason for this stop though I wager was that they took us to a rug seller and we sat in a room and had some tea while these guys tried to flog off some rugs (for 1300euros for some). There was a loom at the end of the room and they mentioned something about getting a demonstration of how the rugs were made, but when they realised that no one was even remotely interested in buying one they shooed us out and back to the van.

On the way to where we were having lunch we were taken to "paradise". This was a garden that they called paradise anyway. In fact it wasn't even really a garden. It was some farmland (not sure what they farmed) with some date palms (which we were told they had to pollinate themselves due to the lack of bees in the area). Some kids handed me and Ash and little camel made from leaves which they obviously wanted money for and we weren't really paying attention when grabbing them. We paid 1dh each. I'm not really entirely sure what the point of this particular stop was, seemed mostly a waste of time. Apart from the little leaf camels they didn't even try to sell us anything.

When we finally stopped for lunch we had 10 minutes to make our orders and then we were back on the van to visit a valley of some sort. We got there, did a short walk along a river between two cliffs and after about 15 minutes were straight back on the bus to lunch. Everything about this trip always felt quite rushed like that. I guess we had quite large distances to cover. It seemed though that the longest stops were always when there was someone trying to sell us something. The place we ate at was nice, with a river running behind it. Some of the german girls had studied one of those leaf camels and were actually making their own and after several attempts were actually making them pretty much just as well. Soon they had a bunch of them made.

Eventually we reached Merzouga and it was time to ride some camels. As we were approaching the camels the white one at the back became really cranky. Throwing it's head back, rolling around on its side and making a bunch of groaning kinda sounds. Of course this was my camel. There's actually a video of me getting on it which you can see here XXXX, was dicey stuff. The camels were roped together in groups of 3-6 and we had 4 groups going. Looking to the side and seeing of the other groups going along in a line with the dunes and sun behind them looked like something out of a movie. It took about an hour to get to our campsite. And when we did we were lead on foot up to the top of the largest dune in the area. Holy crap was that a mission. For every two steps up you slid one back. It was damn hard work. But most of us did eventually make it to the top, and it was a pretty damn nice view. You could look in one direction and see the end of the desert and where Merzouga was. The other was nothing but dunes. What really made the climb up worth it however was the run back down. While we took a little bit of a windy route up so it wasn't so steep, the shortest route down the camp was one long steep slope. So of course we dashed full speed straight down it. Honestly I was half expecting to take 3 steps and roll the rest of the way, but it proved easier than I was expecting. And great fun!

That night we all gathered in the main tent for dinner (chicken tagine) and a bit of fun with drums. One of the guides started the drumming and then there was a bunch of other drums of varying types for anyone to join in on. At one point we tried to get some Queen going but it didn't really catch on. After this the campfire was lit and we sat around mostly just chatting and smoking some hash. Then it was off to sleep as we had another early morning. The tents were actually quite comfortable and warm which was a little unexpected.

The final day was back to Marrakesh with not many stops this time, just a hell of a lot of driving. We arrived back at Marrakesh at something like 8pm. I decided to book into the hostel that Ash and Rikard were at. Not as fancy as the one I was at before but it was less than half the price and still not bad.