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So I smell like sand and camel shit. It's truly second tier tourism.
Here's how I see it.
First tier tourism: Major cities and vacation resorts. All the modern comforts, no street without a conveniently placed McDonalds or Starbucks. There are signs, people tend to speak your language or have the capacity/motive to communicate with you, not so much traveling as it is spending lots of money to sleep somewhere else.
Second tier tourism: Out-of-the-way places and cities that, for one reason or another, are unattractive. These reasons may include hot temperatures, pushy salespeople and a general feeling of desperation. In these places, expect to have to wash your clothes by hand, trust that the chef is not taking a shit in your burger and communicate in a series of angry gestures to a half-asleep tourist police that you're lost and it's hot and you're tired.
This is traveling in the sense that you are seeing something different, which happens to be wholly uncomfortable and will make for great stories later when you're in a bar trying to impress someone who can't believe you're 26 and not successful or married.
Third tier tourism: Cities that people go to exclusively to drink penny beers and have sex with penny prostitutes. You're lucky if you get a bucket of water to wash yourself with and even then that bucket of water is probably filled with Malaria. You eat well, because you are a fat American tourist and can basically have people cook their pets for you if the price is right.
This desert trip was second-tier and edging on third-tier tourism. I hop on a bus half-expecting to be surrounded by families and children and hating my life for two days. Instead it's all young attractive women and everything's okay. We get on the road and realize our bus driver only speaks French. Okay, no problem, they wouldn't be this disorganized, there's probably a guide meeting us on the road.
No. There isn't.
Cue a series of confusing stops where we vaguely understand (through the help of one girl's high school French) what we're supposed to do. At each of these stops, there appears to be the same souvenir salespeople. Like, the exact same. They're even on the fucking mountaintops. I've come to the conclusion that they grow out of the ground and bloom like flowers in the presence of tourists.
We arrive, finally, in the "desert" And by desert, I mean rocky wasteland dotted with bits of brush and powerlines. Yes, I shit you now, our desert expedition took place in view of a highway. And streetlights. It existed in the limbo of second and third tier tourism, where hot showers were possible, but they were simply being denied to us.
The camel ride was not only not intolerable, it was a lot of fun. Helped somewhat by the camel's faces themselves. They manage to look both slightly bemused and completely idiotic. Which is still one-up on how we all looked on top of them. There was another group with three Mexican girls who looked like they were on the verge of being thrown off an animal moving a whole 2 miles per hour.
And me?
I had my hands so tight on the saddle that I think I fused my skin to it.
We got to the camp where we would be sleeping and were entertained by the "Berberes". Now, I'm sure these guys authentically have been raised as Berberes, but the fact that they knew American TV shows and that a couple of them were wearing Guess jeans makes me doubt the authenticity of the whole thing. The experience took on a feeling of them capering around for our entertainment, "Oh look at our ridiculous hats and how we play drums that look oddly similar even though we insist that they weren't made in a factory down the road."
The experience took a sharp turn towards what the fuck when the Berberes coaxed the women in the group away to play the drums in private while leaving the men alone by the fire. It got even stranger when I decided to follow the women. The berberes employed every trick they could to get me to go back to the fire "Oh, I need help with something by the fire, let's go!"
Now, men being sneaky about women is no big deal. But these were men who were entirely in control of my chances of getting home alive.
So, yes, a little uncomfortable.
I did get home alive, in fact, in case you were wondering. All in all, even though the trip seemed as though it had been organized according to the philosophy "Now that you've paid me, go to hell" the fact that the places we went were so beautiful overshadowed all poor planning. So it was a great trip, I'd just advise they replace the Berberes with hot showers.
Here's how I see it.
First tier tourism: Major cities and vacation resorts. All the modern comforts, no street without a conveniently placed McDonalds or Starbucks. There are signs, people tend to speak your language or have the capacity/motive to communicate with you, not so much traveling as it is spending lots of money to sleep somewhere else.
Second tier tourism: Out-of-the-way places and cities that, for one reason or another, are unattractive. These reasons may include hot temperatures, pushy salespeople and a general feeling of desperation. In these places, expect to have to wash your clothes by hand, trust that the chef is not taking a shit in your burger and communicate in a series of angry gestures to a half-asleep tourist police that you're lost and it's hot and you're tired.
This is traveling in the sense that you are seeing something different, which happens to be wholly uncomfortable and will make for great stories later when you're in a bar trying to impress someone who can't believe you're 26 and not successful or married.
Third tier tourism: Cities that people go to exclusively to drink penny beers and have sex with penny prostitutes. You're lucky if you get a bucket of water to wash yourself with and even then that bucket of water is probably filled with Malaria. You eat well, because you are a fat American tourist and can basically have people cook their pets for you if the price is right.
This desert trip was second-tier and edging on third-tier tourism. I hop on a bus half-expecting to be surrounded by families and children and hating my life for two days. Instead it's all young attractive women and everything's okay. We get on the road and realize our bus driver only speaks French. Okay, no problem, they wouldn't be this disorganized, there's probably a guide meeting us on the road.
No. There isn't.
Cue a series of confusing stops where we vaguely understand (through the help of one girl's high school French) what we're supposed to do. At each of these stops, there appears to be the same souvenir salespeople. Like, the exact same. They're even on the fucking mountaintops. I've come to the conclusion that they grow out of the ground and bloom like flowers in the presence of tourists.
We arrive, finally, in the "desert" And by desert, I mean rocky wasteland dotted with bits of brush and powerlines. Yes, I shit you now, our desert expedition took place in view of a highway. And streetlights. It existed in the limbo of second and third tier tourism, where hot showers were possible, but they were simply being denied to us.
The camel ride was not only not intolerable, it was a lot of fun. Helped somewhat by the camel's faces themselves. They manage to look both slightly bemused and completely idiotic. Which is still one-up on how we all looked on top of them. There was another group with three Mexican girls who looked like they were on the verge of being thrown off an animal moving a whole 2 miles per hour.
And me?
I had my hands so tight on the saddle that I think I fused my skin to it.
We got to the camp where we would be sleeping and were entertained by the "Berberes". Now, I'm sure these guys authentically have been raised as Berberes, but the fact that they knew American TV shows and that a couple of them were wearing Guess jeans makes me doubt the authenticity of the whole thing. The experience took on a feeling of them capering around for our entertainment, "Oh look at our ridiculous hats and how we play drums that look oddly similar even though we insist that they weren't made in a factory down the road."
The experience took a sharp turn towards what the fuck when the Berberes coaxed the women in the group away to play the drums in private while leaving the men alone by the fire. It got even stranger when I decided to follow the women. The berberes employed every trick they could to get me to go back to the fire "Oh, I need help with something by the fire, let's go!"
Now, men being sneaky about women is no big deal. But these were men who were entirely in control of my chances of getting home alive.
So, yes, a little uncomfortable.
I did get home alive, in fact, in case you were wondering. All in all, even though the trip seemed as though it had been organized according to the philosophy "Now that you've paid me, go to hell" the fact that the places we went were so beautiful overshadowed all poor planning. So it was a great trip, I'd just advise they replace the Berberes with hot showers.
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