Chance discoveries while traveling give another dimension to what’s been planned and researched. So often it’s the unexpected things that are best remembered and inspire a return visit. In 2024, I had the great good fortune to travel with my youngest daughter, Sascha, to Morocco so we’re able to rekindle our fond travel memories.
Those memories are more distinct when the place has been shared with a family member or close friend. My daughter is both. A highlight of our Morocco trip in February was a foray into the Sahara Desert by camel — a one-humped creature actually called a dromedary and perfectly suited for desert travel.
Their two-toed hoofs allow them to walk across sand without sinking in, and fleshy pads on their hoofs, elbows and knees let them sit in the hot sand without burning their skin. It was mindbending for us to discover that the entire contiguous United States would fit into the Sahara, a desert shared with Morocco by the African nations of Egypt, Algeria, West Sahara, Niger, Chad, Tunisia, Mauritius and Sudan. “Caboose,” the dromedary I’d been assigned, was the lead animal in our group of seven others linked head-to-tail and led on foot by a camel tender into the red sand dunes.
We were in the country’s south, a short distance from Erg Chebbi, not far from Morocco’s border with Algeria. The rider sits on a dromedary in front of the hump, where the camel’s back is quite wide. Dromedaries, with their soft, velvety noses and long eyelashes.
