After a short visit in Fes, Sam and I were pretty anxious to get down to the Sahara and do what all great tourists must do in the desert...ride a camel! A few months ago I somehow got the idea of riding a camel in Morocco locked in my brain. I knew that at some point I had to make it happen or my trip would not be complete. Luckily, camels are Sam's favorite animal, so it didn't take much convincing to get him on board with the plan.

We took an 11 hour overnight bus from Fes to Merzouga. Half way through the ride we were pleasantly greeted by our Czech friend Raddik who we met at the hostel in Fes. He had been spending a few days in another city and coincidentally ended up catching the same bus as us! We chatted for a bit before falling into a deep bus slumber. 

At six in the morning, the lights in the bus flashed on and we came to a halt. The bus driver yelled, "Merzouga, everyone off." Being abruptly awoken from my sleep I was a bit disoriented, but I became even more so when I realized that it was 6 A.M., completely dark outside and we were parked in the middle of a dirt road lined with about five restaurants in the middle of vast desert nowhereness. The bus was not scheduled to arrive until 7 A.M. and I was convinced that this dirt pullout could not possibly be the Merzouga bus station. 

I tried to stay on the bus and go back to sleep, but the driver was persistent and eventually kicked us off. I hesitantly left the bus in complete shock with no idea of what to do next. Luckily, Sam was a bit more functional than me. We had arranged to CouchSurf with a local, but didn't think he would appreciate being called at 6 A.M., and Raddik had already gotten a taxi to meet his CouchSurfing host, so we did what any intelligent two people traveling in Morocco at the wee hours of the morning would do. We wandered a few hundred yards into the desert, got out our sleeping bags and went to sleep on the sand. 

We were surrounded by giant red dunes towering over small houses scattered along the horizon, and watched the first hints of sun poke through the darkness from behind a mud and straw style hut. This would be the first of many Moroccan sunrises we would witness. It wasn´t long before we were approached at our “campsite” in the desert by a toothless Moroccan riding his bike through the sand. Of course he had to stop and introduce himself and offered his tour guide services to take us on a camel trek. Either we stick out like a sore thumb or there are just Moroccans hiding out in all crevices of the earth, but to be found in the desert in the first few minutes of daylight is pretty impressive. I am under the impression that there are always a pair of eyes on us, no matter where we are!

After dismissing Abdul, Sam and I began to formulate a plan. We had not heard from our CS host and were getting worried about what we would do for the day/where we would stay. Things ended up falling through with out host, but luckily Raddik´s host invited us to stay with him. We were told to get a taxi and tell him to take us to Jonas´s house. The driver seemed to know exactly what we meant and we were soon on our way! We drove for about ten minutes down a vacated highway, then drove off shoulder and zoomed across the open desert making our own road toward a town in the distance.

The driver dropped us in front of what appeared to be a large mud and straw made villa with chickens, goats and camels freely roaming outside… Jonas´s house. We were promptly greeted by Jonas and Raddik and led to our own private room alongside the house. Jonas brought us mint tea, cookies and a delicious breakfast. We spent the rest of the morning seeing Jonas´s town and walking along the canals in the oasis. Jonas had three family camels and offered to take us into the desert for the night, my dream was coming true!

We spent two hours traversing across the dunes to a camp. Riding atop a huge camel through endless red sand was incredible. Not to mention, I also got to wear a turban…true Arabian style! We watched the sun set over the Algerian border then descended into a valley where the camp was set up consisting of five tents and a small kitchen. There we were met by two other guides and two Spanish girls also on a camel trek. We had a delicious dinner and spent much of the evening gazing at the gorgeous starry night and milky way…by far the best star display I have ever seen!

We woke up early and traversed a hundred yards up a steep dune to see the sunrise, then made the journey back into town. The Sahara trip was an amazing experience…definitely one of the highlights of my trip thus far!

Growing up in the United States in the 90s was an easy life. Scratch that, let me rewind. Growing up anytime in the 20th century in the United States was easy. We have created and perfected a system that saves us time and allows for a lifestyle of convenience. We go to Wal-Mart, Sears, Safeway, or whatever other respective store to buy everything we need in one easy stop, then if that wasn't enough we have online shopping, drive through banks and DVR so we have even more time to cram important things into each day. This structure saves us time on menial tasks, so we can focus our time and energy on education and careers which in tern benefits a productive culture. 

Now, imagine a society that has not reached the convenience store stage and is so wrapped up in fulfilling its physiological needs, no one can get to the seemingly "more important" tasks. That's Morocco. I'm not trying to spin this in a positive or negative light, but rather writing how I see things as an objective outside viewer. 

If you were to take Wal-Mart and explode it into 75 little stores and scatter them along a narrow street lined with donkeys and wheelbarrows you would have a makeshift Morocco. Each store has a specialty ranging from egg stores to oil markets and carpet shops. If you were to bake a cake for example, you would have to go to the egg, flour/sugar and spice shops before obtaining all the necessary ingredients. 

The average Moroccan makes $4,800 USD a year, so it is important for them to spend their money wisely and make the most of what they have. Things that would be thrown away in the U.S. such as plastic containers, ripped jeans, a pot with a hole and newspaper are saved, repaired and recycled to be used over and over in many different forms. In addition, many products that would normally be machine or factory made are made by hand in Morocco. 

I was shocked to see the amount of work that goes into handmade products here, and the sense of pride that the Moroccans have for their exquisite goods. From carpets to scarves to tiles and wooden goods, you can always count on a little shop with Moroccans hard at work to produce the finest items. 

During one of our days in Fes we toured a ceramics factory. The factory employed somewhere around 500 workers, and I was stunned to see the complex process to create ceramics pieces. For example, here are the steps involved in creating a fountain:

1. The clay must be shaped into a tile. 
2. The clay is fired.
3. The tile is glazed and hand painted with an elaborate design or glazed one color. 
4. The tile is re-fired. 
5. The tile is hand cut and chiseled into smaller square tiles, or the face of the tile is chipped off to create a design such as a flower or leaf. 
6. The smaller mosaic tiles along with the chiseled flower designs re hand glued into a specific pattern and shape for the fountain.
7. Occasionally, silver is welded onto the face of the fountain to add an additional design element. 

All of this by hand! It takes weeks upon end and many workers to produce a single fountain. 

It took me awhile to wrap my head around this huge cultural difference of handmade goods. I was mostly shocked because:

a. In my mind, handmade items are counterproductive. The time it takes to produce them and the labor costs associated seem like they could not compete with the benefits of factory produced goods. 

b. I felt really bad for the little people sitting at a loom tying knots in a carpet day in and day out or the poor man spending his life chipping away at tiles to create the perfect design. This type of lifestyle seemed horrible to me. 

The more I thought about it, the more I began to realize the benefits of the system and accept the realities. The bottom line is that it is a way to employ a lot of people in an country that is not yet developed enough to mass produce factory goods and with a highly uneducated population with high poverty and unemployment rates. At least these people had jobs they could return to day after day. Although not glamorous, they were in much better shape than the beggars and "guides" wandering around the street willing to do anything for work or money. 

While I appreciate all the beautiful handmade goods, I still don't feel great about the lifestyles many of these workers live, and continue to ask myself time after time why I was the fortunate one who got to be born in the United States. I think there is a lot we can learn from the thriftiness of the Moroccan culture, and a lot that we can be thankful for coming from the easy lifestyles we have. 

I think it would be safe to say that most every American has a similar idea of what they imagine Africa to be like. We learn about it in school and see pictures on the news, yet not many Americans have actually been to Africa to confirm or revise these images we conjure up. To many of us, it is a far away and mysterious land. 

I pictured Africa to be full of dirt roads, crazy drivers with beat up cars, small villages rich with culture and vast expanses of desolate desert. I could go on about the socioeconomic status of the people and overall safety of the continent, but I'll let you fill in the blanks.

Even with this image in mind, nothing could have prepared for what I saw on my first day in Fes. Somehow I didnt actually believe that this fairytale land that I had learned about through such a narrow American lens would be anything like I imagined. 

My hostel was located within the medina, or walled area of the city. The Fes medina is one of the largest in the world and consists of 9,400 intertwined alleyways filled with street shops, riad houses, bustling street markets and lots of mud.

My first morning in Fes I went on a tour of the medina with eight other travelers from the hostel. Walking through the streets for the first time was complete sensory overload. I was exhilirated and fascinated by this far away culture and spent at least an hour snapping a constant stream of photos. 

The tour guide took us to a pharmacy, tannery, carpet shop, clothing store and mosque school so we could learn about the different aspects of the culture and see how the perspective items were made. This of course included a 30 to 60 minute sales pitch by the store owner at the end of each session. At first I found the speeches highly entertaining, but by the time we reached the carpet shop and sat staring blankly at the man unrolling carpet after carpet, thinking that this was really the last thing I would ever consider stuffing in my backpack and carrying around for two months, I had had enough. 

Ninety percent of the time I feel like I must be wearing a clown suit with a giant sign, "come talk to me!" Walking through the streets of Fes is like a parade. You are the leader and are followed by lonely Moroccans shouting, "hello, bonjor, how are you? Where you going? You need guide?" Sometimes three or four will congregate around you bartering with eachother to give you a good price on a service you didnt even want in the first place. The people are overly eager to help, as long as you are willing to pay. 

Even, if you were smack dab in the middle of the Sahara with no civilization for miles, I'm sure it wouldn't take more than ten minutes to run across a friendly Moroccan who will take you to his uncle's restaurant then offer you a great deal at his hotel with a camel to go along with it. 

In addition to these amiable offers, you must also take into account that you are getting ripped off 90% of the time. Morocco is not for the faint of heart. You must always be on top of your game, and be able to drive a tough bargin. 

After a few hours of playing the game, my new travel friends and I began to get the hang of how things worked and came up with a few ground rules for navigating the Moroccan maze:

1. Before ordering in a restaurant always ask how much the food costs (of course there are no menus in Morocco, and the prices change depending on what you look like. They will tell you the price, then after eating they try to bump it up, forget that they already told you the original price)

2. If someone wants to help you get somewhere start of by saying, "no money." They may or may not stick around, but at least you won't be obliged to pay.

3. Pretend like you don't speak English, French, Arabic, Spanish, German or Russian. This is a great deterrent, and excellent way to practice your non-native English accent.

3. When in doubt, run from the Moroccans.

I have found myself in several situations where I need directions, but don't want to pay for a Moroccan to guide me all the way to the destination. The running technique is perfect here. I let the helper point me in the correct direction or lead me down an alleyway, then, when they're not looking book it in the opposite direction. The medina is confusing enough that it takes virtually no effort to lose someone. 

This is also an excellent strategy if you get sucked into a bartering match with a shop owner. I made the mistake of asking the price of a small teapot just out of curiosity. The clerk responded with, "120 Durham"-an outrageous price in my mind ($15 USD). He asked how much I would pay, and since I didn't actually want the teapot, I thought I would be safe going with a ridiculously low price and walking away when he said no. I offered 40 Durham ($5 USD). He came down in his initial asking price, and when I showed no interest and began to leave the shop he wrapped the teapot in a plastic bag and chased after me coming down by ten Durham for every ten feet I continued to walk. He eventually hit 40 Durham, my offer and I had no other choice than to run from the man! Luckily, they are not too enthusiastic about pursuing you, so it is always easy to escape.