After waking at 6:30 AM (that seems to be the time that we are now waking-up), we hang out in bed until 7:15 AM, when we get up and take down our tent. At around 8:20 AM, we walk up to the old casbah. It is up the escarpment above the oasis. It had only been abandoned recently (apparently because there had been some flooding which effected the ability of the children to go to school). It is a very nice walk up, and it was a very interesting walk through the casbah.
All the roofs are gone, but the walls are all standing, with some crumbling here and there. We could identify the mosque, found some wells (you could drop a small stone in and hear it hit the mud a few seconds later) and even saw the old showers. We walked through the whole casbah, and came out the other side on top of the escarpment.
From there, after having a look over the oasis, we walked down the escarpment and through the fields (which were irrigated from the water coming from the springs) in the oasis back to the campsite and the truck. When back at the truck, we did some house cleaning (cleaning out the boxes, the interior, etc). It is amazing how dirty and dusty it can get so quickly.
After having brunch and cleaning out the truck, at noon we head south to go visit some of the sand dunes in the Sahara. After a drive of almost three hours, we get to the Erg Chebbi dunes and set up a bush camp north of Merzouga, a small oasis town on the edge of the dunes. The moment we arrive, some local people show up - namely the Tuaregs. They come to have a chat and offer us camel rides in the dunes to watch the sunset or sunrise. We decide to go for a camel ride to see the sunrise (even though we have to wake up at 5:00AM to do so (see tomorrow's entry).
We walk out into the dunes for about an hour, exploring the dunes and the different sand formations. The sand was very hot during the day - uncomfortable to walk bare foot. There were some quite interesting formations and the way the ridges and dunes were formed. As we walked up the ridges, we created quite interesting footprints, with the displaced sand slowing pouring down the side of the dunes. We then head back to the truck to relax and work on our diaries.
Before dinner is served, we walk up into the dunes and watch the sunset as it created soft, warm light over the sand. The sun went down in a bright, red ball over the distant mountain range. After dinner, we relaxed around the fire that we had built (with wood and pine cones that had come from Syria and Iran courtesy of our group leader, Mark, who had them left over from his last trip). The temperature dropped quite significantly after the sun set, and we were all glad for the warmth of the fire.
We went to bed early, as we had to get up early. We had set up our tent on the top of a dune and our tent was perfect (other than that the sand was blown into our tent through the netting and we had a fine coating of sand by morning in our tent). We did not use the fly, and the walls of the tent are almost all netting, so we had a wonderful view of the desert sky with the moon and all the stars - it is such a clear sky in the desert. It had gotten quite chilly, so we were glad to be able to crawl into our sleeping bags and fall to sleep watching the stars.