Getting Groovy in the Sahara Desert - Merzouga, Morocco (Cobrastyle by the Teddybears)

Last year in April I moved off the island of Tenerife, where I lived for 9 months, and took the ferry to mainland Europe with all of my possessions. Tenerife, one of the Spanish Canary Isalnds, straddled the coast of Africa just 1,100km away from the motherland. I had always thought while living on Tenerife that I would utilize my geographical location to explore Morocco, but due to the political climate of the area, the ferry service had been terminated and flights remained expensive. Now that I was leaving Tenerife, however, I found myself with an opportunity to achieve one of my lifelong dreams - getting groovy in the Sahara Desert... I just had to carry all my stuff with me as I did it.

The ferry from Tenerife arrived in the port city of Huelva, Spain on mainland Europe. From Huelva I slept outside the bus station in the rain and then took a bus to Seville, and from Seville I bused to Tarifa and from Tarifa, I took the ferry to Tangier, Morocco. I spent a night in Tangier where I was quickly supplied with incredible quality hash by my hotel concierge, who insisted I take a whole kilo as they were already wrapped and formed into swallowable bullet shapes that I could smuggle into Europe and become rich beyond my wildest dreams... I passed on the idea to much bewilderment of the concierge who assumed I, like all white men, wanted to be rich. I was on one mission, and one mission alone - to conquer the Sahara Desert.

Since the hash vibe was heavy in the air, I decided to take a two day cultural adventure to Chefchaouen, the hash capital of the world to see how some of the finest quality hash in the world was made. It was an incredible and colorfully beautiful adventure that will have to wait for a different video, but it got me primed and ready for the adventures that awaited me in the Sahara. After my adventures in the mountainous, hashy, blue city, I took a 3 hour bus from Chefchaouen to Fes and then an 8 hour bus from Fes to Merzouga where I arrived at 5am. I took the only available cab to a hotel also owned by the cab driver. The cabby explained that the hotel was situated somewhere an hour and a half into the desert where the tallest dunes of the Sahara compiled themselves. Since we arrived at such an odd hour, the cab driver/hotel owner had a bit of leverage on prices and hotel options as we were literally in the middle of nowhere with nowhere to go. Somehow, out of sheer brokeness, I managed to talk him down and reserve more ideal rates, which I agreed I would not share with the other recklessly spending guests.

The hotel turned out to be some sort of sand fortress oasis overlooking the dunes with incredible vibes. I explained to the owner that my goal was to shred the dunes in a 4-wheeler and to go off on a vision quest into the desert where I would sleep for my remaining two nights in Morocco and he accommodated me but constantly played games of raising the rates, "forgetting" what he previously said, and charging me for every little step between.

Once the plans were settled and I no longer had to worry about money exchanges, I set off into the desert alone to eat some mushrooms that a beautiful topless hippie girl in a black thong, who lived in a cave, gave me at a nude beach back on the island of Tenerife. As the mushrooms began to set in, I returned to the hotel oasis to join with the hotel owner who was waiting for his new guests to arrive and had arranged for our camel caravan into the desert. As we set off into the desert by camel, I ate some more mushrooms on camel back and things got really, really groovy.

The dunes shimmered with hidden tones and beauty as I surrendered to the mystical desert experience of my dreams. When we arrived to our desert camp, I set off into the desert at sunset alone to explore the silky dunes and the mystical beyond that the dunes of the Sahara represented to me.

The rest of that story lives only in my consciousness.

With all the time in the world to kill, I grabbed a sandboard and set off into the desert multiple times to tackle some of the biggest dunes I could see... the journey into the dunes was no joke as distances streched further and further between the coveted summits my eyes adored.

After the first night in the desert, playing drums gathered around a fire, there was some more sandboarding and then three of us broke off from the group to a much smaller berber campsite. We would spend our final night having a much more intimate experience with the desert and it's true people. I set off into the desert alone again in search of the ultimate sunset view and I found it and soaked it up in it's entirety... and once again I totally forgot that once the sun sets, it's completely dark and very difficult to find your way back to a tiny campsite in the middle of the rolling hills and disorientating plane of the desert. After a bit of a disorientated scare, I managed back on track and dosed off next to a camp fire under the glorious Sahara stars.