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Part 3 |
South of the Middle Atlas mountains, the scenery changes. We did not see a single cloud for almost a week, just wall to wall blue sky. The panoramas were breathtaking. The light is a photographer's dream. 
We dragged ourselves from our warm beds in the middle of the night to take
a landrover out to the dunes of erg Chebbi before sunrise.
In pitch darkness, we waded through the sands to perch on one of the
higher dunes.
The glow on the horizon highlighted the Algerian border, and we could see
the outlines of a fortified border post on the mesa.
Slowly the sky brightened. Now we could see the auberges in the dunes, where we could have spent a night in the desert. The camel skin tents of the bivouacs were dark smudges far below us. Here and there a camel rested in the sand. A lone figure fanned the last embers of a fire with his blanket. 
One moment there was only a glow in the sky. The next moment the upper limb of the sun burst over the horizon and night turned to day. The sand was blue. Now it turned red. Finally, came the ochre colour we have seen before when storms carried it into the upper atmosphere and sprinkled it in rain and snow on southern Europe. The sand is so light. The grains are so small. We dumped piles of it from our shoes and socks. Some grains are probably there still. From Zagora, it is only 52 days to Timbuktu, by camel. I think we will pass on that one. 
Miraculous ribbons of green wind their way across the desolate dry plains, following the flows of the rivers fed by the snows on the High Atlas. For centuries, this strip of land has been cultivated. Modern irrigation and the creation of dams and reservoirs has increased the output and reduced the risk of flood and famine. The Tafilalt, a small Mesopotamia created by the confluence of the Rheris and Ziz rivers, supports 1.35 million date palms. The Draa river flows 200 km into the desert before it evaporates to nothing. Along the edges of these ribbons of green, adobe villages and towns stand like piles of muddy lego tossed in the sand. 
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