Shades of Merzouga
Merzouga is one of Morocco’s top desert destinations. The sweeping dune sea, which has been featured in films such as The Prince of Persia and The Mummy, is where every visitor to Morocco comes to live out their desert dreams. Of course, we showed up in the middle of a series of raging sandstorms with blistering 105+ temperatures, so our desert dream felt a bit more like a very sandy, very hot hallucination.
Yes, we spent a great deal of our time in our hotel room watching the dunes push their way through the gap under our door. When the winds dropped a bit, we moved to the hotel restaurant and sipped mint tea with clouds of sand swirling around us as the hotel owner sat staring out an open door wondering aloud why his hotel was so empty. (Gee, I wonder why!) On two occasions, the wind stopped and we ran out the door into the Merzouga dunes to experience the Moroccan Sahara.
If you are asking yourself why there are no pictures of me in this post, it’s because I didn’t really have time to hand Thomas the camera before the winds picked up again. However, the weather did come with one unexpected advantage. The sand-filled skies created a bizarre diffused light which gave the Merzouga dunes the surreal appearance of yellow-peach whipped cream. In some ways, it was much more beautiful than the first time I visited when I had no wind and blue skies. I guess that’s why it is worth visiting the same place twice, right?
This is an amazing picture, what a stunning place!! Wow!!
This coming from Ms. Tonga!
ContemporaryNomad hahaha, you’re in the middle of a friggin desert 😀
I mean, I had sand… but not mountains of sand 😉 xx
Hey, where are you headed later this year? We are headed for Tokyo in a couple of weeks, so we are going to be back in Asia. Are you returning to Australia or Britain?
ContemporaryNomad we’ll be in aux for a few months more and then heading to the UK….. how do we cross paths!!?? 😮
We are probably going to be in Japan until end of Nov. Are you stopping in Southeast Asia on the way to UK? Why on earth would you go back to UK in winter?!!!
Super pictures.
Wow this looks so beautiful. How far is this place from Marrakesh? Can you do this on a daytrip?
If you drove straight through it would take about 10-11 hours to get from Marrakesh to Merzouga. So no, it would not work as a day trip. Many people visit Merzouga on organized three-day trips from Marrakesh to Fez.
I know somewhere in China or Egypt sandland