Last Stop in Morocco....still

First we should apologize to our faithful blog followers for not posting yesterday. We were quite exhausted after our 22 hour bus ride and didn't really have a good chance to sit down and type.



So, yes, we made it to Dakhla but we're still here. Our bus ride was uneventful, just long and tiring. Brian made it through ok.

Here's proof that we're actually in the Sahara Desert (the largest desert on earth)

We actually managed to arrange a ride to Mauritania quite easily on arriving as well. We were about to take a taxi to a hotel in the middle of the city when some guy spotted us and said in English, "Maybe you like to go to Mauritania?" That started us on our cross Sahara adventure. We were a little leary about the whole situation. First we were told that we would leave at 9 am and then all of a sudden the time changed to 3 am.....who wants to get up at 3 in the morning, in the dark, get into a car outside the hotel room and travel to the middle of no where with people you don't know. Aziz (our new Moroccain friend) just laughed at our concerns. We were soon put at ease once we met the driver, Aziz let us take his picture, and we met some others that were to be travelling with us. Aziz is friends with everyone in town and we knew he could be trusted. We also spent some time praying about it and know that we are in God's hands. (No need to worry mom's)! We spent some time with Aziz, shared some mint tea and he showed us where to get good deals on food and turbans! We'll show you a picture of Brian in his turban later....seriously, he has a turban (saharan style).

So, last night before our early bedtime, we had a delicious and quite authentic Saharan meal of fish kababs and camel meat. I (Erin) can't believe we ate it! It was actually very good and had a similar taste to beef. (not chicken like every other strange meat).

Here's a view of the city from our hotel window.

So, to continue our story. We woke up at 3 am and packed up our stuff. One of our drivers was downstairs knocking at our hotel door so we went down to meet him. Once in the van we had to pick up Juan (from Argentina) and we were on our way, with Bob Marley seranading us over the radio. No later than 30 min. down the road we started to hear thump, pound, thump, pound from the engine which was right underneath us. It was a cabover van (so Brian tells me). That warrented a stop and after about 20 min of standing at the side of the road, we were right back to where we started. So, the van is in the garage and we are still in Dakhla awaiting our Saharan adventure for tomorrow. Thankfully we weren't in the middle of now where when we broke down.

Although we're not in the middle of rolling dunes, the desert here is still quite beautiful. We are right on the coast. This town is said to have the best kite boarding in the world, though few know about it. Many say this is the last town of civilization in the desert. Really, you should look on the internet where we are. Nobody comes here. The rolling dunes is all we will see after tomorrow as we enter the heart of the Sahara.

So, now we are passing our time drinking mint tea with lots of sugar!!! (they like it sweet). There is a real art to pouring it, the more bubbles, the better. I'm not even half as high as they go. Wes, they put your milk pouring to shame.