Two Deserts or One Dessert?

For me, dessert and desert have always had something in common. When I learned how to spell, the teacher taught us an easy way to remember how to spell these similar words. She said, “think of which you would rather have two of and that is the one with two s’s.” In most circumstances, two desserts probably is preferable to two deserts, but not when you have the opportunity to sleep under the stars in the Sahara, as I did last night.

After a one hour camel ride (1.7 miles, yes, pathetic) we reached a Bedouin tent right before sunset. As the starts lit up, we enjoyed a traditional desert dinner of rice soup and beef stew, which despite the pictures below, actually tasted pretty good. Everyone was in bed (on the ground) by 9:30 so we could star gaze. Surprisingly, there was light pollution, so while it was beautiful here, the stargazing is better in central Australia. We woke at 5:45 a.m. today for a disappointing sunrise, but regardless, the Sahara is breathtaking.

To cover my food bases, earlier yesterday, we also had a traditional Moroccan pizza, which is made of a brown bread filled with eggs, meat, spices, and a few other things I could not decipher. Pretty good. I have become somewhat addicted to Moroccan tea, which was served with the pizza. Also, en route to the Sahara the day before, we stopped at a hotel for some trout, a local delicacy. Moroccans use bread as their utensil, so every meal is served with a lot of bread.

Somehow, in the Sahara 60 kilometers from the Algerian border, in a rustic auberge literally in the middle of nowhere, I have wifi; this is in stark contrast to the sad fact that in my office in midtown Manhattan, I never could even get decent mobile phone reception. They have that here too, I just don’t have a phone. Just a quick post, but figured I’d put something out there when I could. It might be another 4 days, though maybe not.

And finally, Lacey of Arabia.

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