The MOJO Family: Camel Trek and Tour, Morocco

We booked a 4 day, 3 night tour from Fes to Marrakech via the Erg Chebbi dunes in the Sahara desert. It's really common for tourists to do some version of this tour and ride camels or 4x4 in the desert. Most people spend 1 night at the desert camp, but we opted for two nights so we could get the most out of all the driving. We were picked up in Fes by an awesome driver / guide who spoke English and treated our family very well. It's a long drive from Fes to the desert - 7 hours of driving before we got to our camels.

Boarding the camels and starting off was SO much fun. Aunt Cynthia was the only one who has ever ridden a camel before. All of us giggled to get on and off our camels. The girls had HUGE smiles on their faces for at least the first 45 minutes and kept saying things like "This is so much fun!" and "Wow! This is so cool!"

We have a video collage of some of the videos we took on the tour. Check it out on our instagram page!

Switching to Rachel's perspective:

Our camel trek was awesome! Each of us had a camel, and we were tied together with a rope. For example, my camel’s nose was tied to Cynthia’s camel’s rear (The order was Cynthia, me, Ava, Mommy and Daddy). Ava insisted that we all name our camels, so I called mine Humphrey. Hump-phrey! Perfect name for a camel. We also had Sarah of the Sahara (Cyn), Bounce (Ava), Shadow (Mom) and Sandy (Dad). In the lead was our guide Mohammed. He walked the whole way, over all the sand dunes, leading the camels along.

It was tricky to see ONLY untouched sand dunes, since jeep rides and other camels had also come here, but you couldn’t see the city, which was cool. Some of the sand dunes were really steep, but we didn’t go over any of those on camels, because even a small hill is still pretty bumpy and feels steep on a camel. Also, my camel, Humphrey, was scared of upward inclined planes. Every time it was the slightest bit steep, he’d just stay still, and refuse to move. At one point, Cynthia and Mohammed had made it up a little hill, but Humphrey stopped moving when he was like a foot from the top. Mohammed actually unleashed Sarah of the Sahara from everyone else, and took us on a roundabout route with less hills. Sarah of the Sahara turned out to be very well behaved, and didn’t move at all! We have some funny pictures of Lone Ranger Cynthia (camel version).

And we're off!

Cynthia and "Sarah from the Sahara", all by themselves because
Rachel's camel "Humphrey" wouldn't go up any steeper hills

Music and a campfire after dinner

Star gazing at night

We got to our “traditional” camp for the night and ate dinner, watched the stars, and went to bed. To be clear, these “traditional Berber tents” are neon huts with beds, electricity, showers, and flushing toilets. A very tourist-ized version of “traditional” in my opinion.

The next day, I had a new camel! Maybe they didn’t want Humphrey I to randomly stop moving on a hill. I called this camel Humphrey the second (Why waste a good name?).

We went to a desert oasis, where we went sandboarding. Ava wanted to do it from the top of this massive dune, so I lugged the sandboard all the way up to the top, which is EXHAUSTING, in case you were wondering. Sandboarding was quite fun, even if riding on an old broken snowboard in barefeet wasn't easy and a little scary!

Dancing for joy while riding along

Ripples in the sand

Loads of these black beetles that leave their tracks

Old ski and snowboards at the oasis

M doesn't get hurt sandboarding

Ava goes!

See the kids way up there? Rachel lugged the snowboard WAY UP there for her sister

Cynthia: "I didn't even go to the hospital!"

Then we went to a traditional Nomad camp for lunch. This time it really did feel traditional. [There were cars everywhere and we were now in a less attractive area of the desert, not the beautiful orange dunes. We met the traditional nomad family that made us lunch. Their 2 year old son joined us for lunch but nobody else ate with us. Unless you count the goat that entered our tent and tried hard to get food from us.]

The goat kept coming in the tent and Ava and I thought it was hilarious

That's what the traditional nomadic area looks like

I was the closest to the Algeria border I have ever been, less than 10 miles! This was cool but also like, gah, that’s Algeria, eek!

On the way back to the camp (the one we were staying at), we were heading over a sand dune, and suddenly Humphrey sat down! Totally randomly. When a camel sits, they go in front knees, back knees, front ankle, back ankle. Lurch, lurch, lurch, lurch. Good thing I was holding on. We all stopped and Mohammed started to walk over, but suddenly, up Humphrey got, and just kept moving. Never happened again.

At camp that night we sandboarded some more and played in the dunes.

The next morning, we rode our camels back to the city. By this point our butts were very sore, so part of me was glad to get off the camels. It was amazing, though! We loved it!

Back to mom...

This trip checked off a bucket list item for me: "Ride a camel as a real form of transportation from point A to B"... I wouldn't say camel travel is the most efficient. It took us hours to go just a few km. But it was really fun. Riding a quiet camel along the desert sand was very peaceful and meditative. And if you ever plan to do a camel trek, we recommend bringing bike shorts with a thick chamois!!

We had a very long drive to some gorges at the foot of the Atlas mountains, and spent the night in a nice hotel at Dades Gorge. One stop we made was at a fossil museum because parts of the desert have a lot of fossils. The next day we had a lot more driving to check out the 'Hollywood of Morocco' and a very old kasbah before driving up and over the Atlas mountains in order to get to Marrakech.