Sahara to Senega

After a very uncomfortable 4 hour bus ride from beautiful and relaxing Essaouira to the busy and bustling Marrakech we took off for the Sahara! In route to the Sahara we stopped by a few of Morocco's other attractions including Ouarzazate which is a small town where many films including parts of Gladiator, Lawrence of Arabia and Star Wars were filmed! We also stopped by Atlas studios and the Todra Gorge which were almost as impressive as the Sahara itself! Before to long we were on the edge of the massive Sahara Desert! This was literally the end of the road, we got out of the car and aboard our new form of transportation... CAMELS! Keegan and I had been looking forward to riding Camels through the Sahara since we first heard we were going to have the opportunity! Before we had even started we had both named our Camels and were arguing who's was faster (Mine was named Humphry for obvious reasons and Keegans was named Kane because its black curly hair closely resembled Kane Bickfords ) However after about 20 minutes the novelty started to ware off and we began to realize we were just on over sized uncomfortable llamas... The Sahara desert is truly amazing! We rode until just before sunset when we came upon a set of Berber tents (Berber's are the native people to the region) which is where we stayed for the night. We climbed to the top of the tallest dune around and watched the sunset with rolling dunes of sand as far as you could see in every direction! As famous as the Sahara is for how hot it is, it should be equally famous for how cold it gets at night! Especially this time of year! Luckily the Berber people where used to this and once inside the tents it wasn't to bad. We woke up before first light at 530am to grab a quick bite for breakfast and it was back on the Camels. We rode at a bit quicker of a pace to get out of the desert before the Saharan Sun was in full force, eventually the edge of the desert came into view and to be honest I wasn't disappointed to see it! I got enough of the desert in 2 days, I cant imagine how people can choose to live there!
After leaving the Sahara we started heading south towards Senegal! At about 3am after a very sketchy landing we stepped out of the Dakar Airport and into a completely different world! So far everywhere we have gone we have been able to find someone we can communicate with, either with their broken English or my broken Spanish but not here! The good news is so far the people here have been very friendly and with our random vocabulary of French and a lot of pointing and smiling we were able to get a shuttle to our Hotel. Our Hotel is by far the nicest we have stayed in yet! 3 nights at the Novotel Hotel was very generously donated by Pico and has given us a safe place to stay in Dakar while we try to get out car through customs and figure out a few final details! Hopefully we will be able to get our car through customs quickly and start heading East towards Cameroon!