Camels, Again?!?
27 September 2014 | Morocco
Linda
Despite the fact that Dave and I had ridden camels in Tunisia two years ago, the rest of our friends had not, so this Moroccan tour included a camel ride into the Sahara and camping overnight in a Berber tent.
Anne, our friend from Scotland, had viewed the camel ride with apprehension. As luck would have it, one hour into the jerky uncomfortable ride, within sight of the desert tent campground, Anne's camel slipped in the sand when bit by another camel and threw her to the ground. She managed to avoid 8 camel hooves and the tether lines to land squarely on her back in the sand. Stuart, her husband, did the quickest non-approved camel dismount to run to her side.
Anne was definitely in pain and the Berber guides didn't seem to have any first aid kit. Cell phones back to base camp didn't work either. Finally Stuart hiked in the dark with a Berber guide up to a high sand dune and got ahold via cell phone with our van driver who promised to send a "quad" for Anne in the morning. Meanwhile we made Anne as comfortable as possible on cushions around the center camp. We tried to feed her with bread soaked in milk, but what we thought was powdered milk turned out to be salt! Yuck!
Finally one of the Berber guides came with 3 small glasses, a cigarette lighter and several pieces of paper. Now what? Anne was lying face down so we forced ourselves to say nothing to alert her to the fact that the Berber lit a small piece of paper on fire, dropped it in the small glass and quickly turned it upside down with a burning flame on her lower back. To our surprise, the flame instantly extinguished and the glass became a warm suction cup. The Berber kept working like this on sore sections of Anne's back for an hour and Anne said it felt good and relaxed her back muscles. Next he applied a warm oil massage.
We will never be sure if Anne's relief came as a result of the hot suction cups or the Berber massage!
The next morning at dawn a quad arrived for Anne. Stewart had had enough of camels too and he walked back to basecamp following the quad tracks. The rest of us rode camels back. We all agreed that Stewart had the best trip, walking alone as the sun rose in the Sahara dunes.
Our trip continued with a long drive through low mountains, full of apple orchards being harvested. We arrived at Fez in early evening where the 3 Kiwis were to continue their tour the next day. The 4 of us continued on 2 more hours on a modern motorway back to the marina in Rabat, arriving at 11 pm. Along the way there were numerous police check stations which our driver said were checking for illegal immigrants. Interestingly, our Saharan Berber camp the night before was only 15 km from the border with Algeria. Our Berber guide said that Bedouins and Berbers went back and forth across the border to Algeria on camels, but it was closed to vehicle traffic.