The Jewish Dunes
A Moroccan Road Trip: Part 5 of 6
Note: When I first picked up a camera, I thought it would be great to capture some great landscapes. The following pics and linked gallery are some of my favourites of all time.
Much of the Sahara I experienced was hard, stoney, scorched earth. The iconic sand dune areas are known as Ergs.
Describable as both a sea and mini-mountain range of shape shifting sands; seemingly confined to a fixed area like a sea but rising out of the surrounding plains like mountains.
It feels like they should have blown off into the surrounding flatlands by the wind, but they haven’t.
Our driver and local Berber.
At the auberge, I teamed up with a travelling German mother-son duo to negotiate a dawn 4WD tour. None of us wanted to be shepherded around on a package tour, we wanted the freedom to discover.
For a small fee we hired a Berber driver and a 4WD to take us on a free-form trek to Erg Lihoudi, also known as The Jewish Dunes. The named derived from now absent Jews that lived amongst them.
Our chirpy Berber driver met us pre-dawn and took us to the Erg, parking near an abandoned Berber shack made of refuse, both natural and manmade.
“These are important to us” he said as I took a photo, “we used to live in these”.
I walked with the Germans to the top a tall dune to watch the sunrise over the plain before us and then claimed the real reward; sole wandering amongst dunes and discovering a deserted tourist camp being slowly swallowed by the creeping sands.
Another example of the widespread impact of Covid, the camp was a popular destination for American tourists pre-Covid but is now empty.
There were small-critter footprints here and there, but the lack of human footprints probably said something about the lack of interest other travellers showed in the abandoned camp.
Camel skins were thrown across the tops of the tents for reasons unknown.
Whatever could have been salvaged from the camp was done so well before I arrived. But the tents remained, maybe in the hope they could be resurrected one day or maybe it was just more of hassle to dismantle them.
The photos are some of my favourites of Morocco. Atmospheric, a little mysterious, linear and organic, contrast of linear structures and flowing sands.
It’s these moments and places I hope to find; discovery, surprise, the overlooked, the lived in. A place that fires the imagination and senses.
Any other decision or set of events would have steered me away from this scene.
Not taking the time to take dawn photos at Ait Benhaddou would have meant I didn’t meet the Spanish hitchhikers. Not stopping for the Spaniards would have meant I ended up at the ‘biggest dunes’ at Erg Chigaga, and probably a package tour and camp. Not bad just not unique.
And deciding to stay on the edge of town in an edgy auberge led me to the like-minded Germans, which helped in organising our trek.
After collecting whatever photos I could, our Berber guide called me back to return to home, not before posing for a few photos.
That was the satisfying high which was followed by a surreal and still confusing confrontation of sorts at an out-of-town village to follow in the next story…
