Tuesday 08 January Todra Gorge to Erg Chebbi (Sahara desert)

A very dark night's sleep in our cave! Izzie and I go for a walk along the dried up river bed before breakfast, cracking the ice on the small pools of water. We drive down through the Todra Gorge, and see the nomads' goats and where they live in the caves above the source of the wadi. Our journey continues through more and more arid country and little towns with breeze block and mud and straw buildings. All flat roofed. We then stop at a curious museum of water off the main road. It's owned by a flamboyant Moroccan artist. He has assembled Berber and Moroccan artifacts, but the most intriguing part are the springs that bubble up from the desert into beautiful bubbly pools. He shows us how to use a water clock and gives us some Jericho roses and tells us to put them in water overnight. We pass through Erfoud with its Arab women dressed in black (rather then the more colourful attire of the Berber women) and then visit a fossil factory, where they cut and polish marble encrusted with fossils. Then on to Rissani where there is a market complete with donkey park, instead of car park. There are many Berbers here. We walk round the covered market and see goats heads and trotters (freshly cut!) spread out on the ground. We buy some tagine spice mixture and some saffron from a spice market. Then we continue to Merzouga where we buy some red wine which we take to Erg Chebbi, where we meet our camels and ride on them through the dunes before opening one of our bottles of red wine as we sit on the dunes to watch the sun set. For supper we have prunes and beef tagine with noodles with cinnamon and an aubergine and tomato tagine as well (also our second bottle of red!). It's icy icy cold as we sip our tea under the gin clear starry skies even with a log fire. After some drumming and singing (including by us!) we head to our freezing tent for a very chilly night.