Morocco, Part 2: When Wine Replaced Water in the Sahara

The best part about the camp…it had a BAR. Yep. A well-stocked bar…in the middle of the Sahara. Do these nomads know how to cater to college students, or what? Before we got off the bus, they told us that under no circumstances were we allowed to bring alcohol to the camp because apparently some crazy shit went down last year when people snuck alcohol in. Apparently, though, we were allowed to drink if the alcohol was from the nomad bar. Woohoo! 

Despite the bar, I got a coke while everyone else was getting beer and bottles of wine to split. I’m not a fan of either, and the only other options were buying an entire bottle of gin or tequila. 1) Ew. 2) How the hell do I drink an ENTIRE BOTTLE by myself? Bad idea. So, responsibly again, I stayed away from the bar.

As the night progressed, though, and my friends were getting happier and happier by the sip, my coke was looking less and less appealing. Everyone seemed to be enjoying their wine… so I figured, why not? Besides, if I was gonna be sleeping with bugs and sand and God knows what else, it’d probably be best if I was knocked out. So, I manned up and split a bottle of wine with a friend of mine. Half a bottle and many disgusted faces later, I was good to go.

As we were sitting out by the bonfire area nursing our nomad alcohol, all of a sudden, techno music starts blasting and strobe lights turn on. No joke. COOLEST NOMAD CAMP EVER! Who knew that when we all signed up for “Nomad Camp and Camel Trek in the Sahara” that we were gonna get “Booze and a Dance Party in the Middle of the Nowhere.” I had to give myself a little pat on the back for picking this trip.
 
None of us had eaten since about 1, so we didn’t have much in our stomachs. At about 9:30, they told us it was time for dinner. Perfect timing for drunken munchies. Like I mentioned before, there were two dining tents. One was huge with tons of tables…the other was a tiny little thing on the other side of the bonfire area that was essentially a sleeping tent, but with two tables in it. We slowly sauntered over to the main dining tent, but found that we were too slow…so we got the boot and were sent to the tiny one. The 9 of us grabbed one of the tables and dug into the bread within seconds. Halfway through our desert meal, the lone light bulb that was hanging in our tent went out. Thankfully, one of my friends had deemed her two glow-sticks a nomad camp necessity, so we made do.

After dinner, we all went to our tents and dragged our mattress pads out by the bonfire because we decided to sleep out there. Before we knew it, everyone was dragging theirs out of their tents too. Hell yea. SAS sleepover under the stars. It was so beautiful out! A little cloudy, unfortunately, but such a cool experience to be sleeping outside, under the stars, in the Sahara. That, alone, made the uncomfortable 12 hour bus-ride and obnoxious tour guide 100% worth it. 

We all settled down for the night, and, just as I’d hoped, the wine put me out. I woke up the next morning after a good night’s sleep, bug-free, to the sunrise and the loud snoring of the kid sleeping above my head. I was so tempted to throw my pillow at him, so he’d shut up, but I was in a good mood, so my pillow stayed under my head. I seriously don’t know what the hell I’m gonna do if I get a snorer as “The One.”  Please, fate, don’t do that to me. Even I don’t deserve that kind of punishment. 

So I’ll fill ya in on days 3 and 4 tomorrow!