The Little Woman's Adventure Guide

Nose running. Throat hurting. Sniffling. Headache rushing over me like waves on a beach. Too bad the sand I was sitting on wasn’t on a beach. A beach would have had salt water and salt water would have maybe relieved my cold-like symptoms. Instead of beach sand, I had desert sand. Sahara desert sand.

Close your eyes. Picture all the items you need to battle a cold. Open your eyes. Picture sand. Other than clothes, the only other things you thought to bring were: limoncello and Oreos. Twenty-two year old logic. Go figure.

While trying to bury my head in the sand during the advertised midnight drum dance party, I began asking myself a variety of questions. How did I end up in Morocco? How did I end up on a camel trekking tour? How did I catch a cold in the Sahara Desert? How did I end up here?

I had decided to travel to Morocco on an absolute whim. I came home late one night from a bartending shift to find my mother watching a travel documentary on Morocco. The blues and greens of coloured tiles and art deco styles of the riads caught my eye and led me to sit on our leather couch for a few minutes to gaze into this North African oasis through the TV screen. Sunshine and cerulean blue skies cascading behind white stone buildings. Orange and clay coloured mountains bordering the great Sahara Desert. The bustling of the souks weaving their ways of wares throughout towns and cities. The thought was instantaneous; I needed to experience it.

A week later I met friend for bagels and told him about my newly acquired adventure quest. Intrigued, he told me about camel trekking tours into the Sahara. It was settled. We were going. Fifteen minutes later we had a Moroccan adventure-travel-plan scribbled on the front page of a Metro newspaper with a camel drawn next to it. I’m serious. That’s how it all happened. Six months later I was half passed out on a sand dune taking swigs of limoncello, munching on Oreos, and admiring how beautiful the night sky was. How it sparkled without an ounce of smog and blanketed those bronze dunes is a sight you have to experience. The night had a rare beauty to it. My breath completely taken away by the black, tan, and twinkling. It is those moments as a traveller that remind you why you do it. The beauty in the world that pops up and surprises you; the beauty that was always there and you finally got around to noticing. It made me forget about my cold and at that moment in my life, that truly was a beautiful thing.