Last Morocco post: Back in 1999 I went to Morocco with my father, step-mother Kathy Madden, my brother and some friends. We rented cars after taking the ferry from Spain and drove South, with the trip culminating driving on the desert with no roads. We reached the Merzouga dunes of the Sahara, and found an isolated Auberge through our Lonely Planet guide book. We could not see any other signs of people for as far as the horizon stretched. My brother and Kathy got on the one camel, while the rest of us walked up to the ridge of the dune. On the horizon we saw some sand kicking up. After first thinking it was a sand storm, we later learned that it was the Paris to Dakar race. The the race eventually got closer to us, going around our dunes. But a straggler car at the back of the race decided to try to drive through the dunes as a short cut. As it happened, after being alone experiencing the complete peace of the expansive Sahara desert, they came right to where we were walking, and promptly got stuck. They only spoke French but my father and I helped to dig them out. I took a moment to get this picture, with Kathy and
@joshua_kent on the camel, thinking a situation like this could never happen again.
Well it happened again at the culmination of our recent trip. As we walk out of the dunes, after experiencing the most beautiful possible sunset, another stray race car got stuck, right where we were walking. This time it was two women who only spoke French(they reminded me of a young Kathy) refused our help out of honesty for the race rules would have had them disqualified. Maybe Kathy(who passed away in October) sent them there…
We spent a wonderful night in the desert, playing music with new friends and sleeping in tents. So many highlights to the trip, but this moment connected the trip even more to memories of being in Morocco with Kathy, whose frequent flyer miles made the trip possible.
#merzougadesert🐪🐪
