I’ve never seen anything quite like the stars over the Sahara Desert. I write this having spent the last three days traversing southern Morocco by bus, landrover, and yes, even camel–and have the sand in my sneakers to prove it! I’ve always thought of myself as more of an ocean girl, but it turns out that the same sense of peace and infinity I love is captured in the desert’s horizon.
Two days ago I lay on the roof of my hotel in Merzouga, picking out constellations with my fellow abroad-ers.
“That ‘W’ there, is that Cassiopeia?”
“Is that bright one Mars or Venus?”
With minimal light pollution, the clarity of the cosmos was nearly overwhelming. I am lucky to be abroad with the kind of people who will stay up late enjoying the stars and then wake up at 6AM to watch the sunrise from the top of a dune. This shared sense of “joie de vivre” made our most recent excursion truly refreshing.
From the black goats clamoring along the cliffs of the Atlas Mountains, to a Barbary Macaque leaping from the trees to catch a banana from eager tourists—I will be committing all of these new sights to memory, my story vault…and probably Facebook too.