Merzouga is a small village near the Erg Chebbi desert, which is one of the biggest tourist attractions in Morocco. There you can, among others: ride camels, spend the night in tents in the desert, ride over the dunes in an off-road car or try sandboarding, a desert version of snowboarding. This last one sounded the most interesting to me.
I visited Merzouga in March, while on a climbing trip to the Todra Gorge. We decided to spend one day resting and went to Erg Chebbi to try sandboarding.
We got there in 3 hours with our rental car. We didn’t have anything booked and we hadn’t written anywhere before to ask about organizing such an attraction. We expected that, like in other places in Morocco, as soon as we entered the village, someone would immediately stand in our way and would not let us go unless we at least let him present his offer. And so it happened.
We decided to use the services of a man who drives tourists over the dunes in an off-road vehicle. If I remember correctly, after dividing into 4 people, it was about EUR 16 per person for a 2-hour ride, which, however, in our case was interrupted by sandboarding.
But first we had to get some boards. There were, as I remember, two snowboard rental shops nearby, but they only had single boards in stock, and they looked like they were taken out of a garbage can. So we went with the man to the rental place a little further.
Before I came to Merzouga, I saw some photos of sandboarding on the Internet and I wondered why in all the photos people were sliding straight down the slope. I was very curious about riding on sand and whether it was possible to turn. I quickly understood why everyone was sandboarding straight down the slope when we got to the rental place. Well, you can rent snowboards, but they don’t have snowboard boots in stock… And it’s difficult to turn when your feet don’t hold on to the board ;) The best thing is that you could also rent skis, but also without boots :) The guy from the rental shop himself talked about skis that it was not the best equipment for dunes, but when it comes to the board, when I commented that you need special shoes, he argued that you don’t need any special shoes at all, because you can attach the board to regular shoes.
Ultimately, only my friends rented the boards and I gave up. Firstly, because of the price – it was about EUR 14 and it was impossible to negotiate less, saying that we only wanted to go down a few times. Secondly, I was worried about my already slightly injured ankle.
However, I went to the dunes with my friends.
At times, it was even interesting on the steep dunes.
We were also taken to the viewpoint from which you can see the desert. Honestly, I expected something more spectacular… From that point it was clearly visible that these were actually just a few dunes in the middle of a larger, rocky desert.
Although the dunes themselves, I must admit that they were very nice. The yellow sand against the blue sky looked beautiful :)
My friends tried sandboarding on one of these dunes. The descent was, I think, about 50 meters long and a ride to the top by car was not included in the price, so after the descent they had to climb up in the heat. Everyone managed to do some riding, but also everyone had at least one fall. After each one, I imagined how much sand they must have under their clothes now and I was glad I didn’t decide to do that ;)
Finally, we visited one of the small restaurants in Merzouga. The orange juices were delicious and very cheap, as everywhere in Morocco, the tajin was also good, but the Berber pizza served on a cardboard box didn’t look appetizing… especially after we saw an employee cutting it while holding it with a dirty hand.
The day was nice, but I was glad that we were going back to climbing the next day ;)
Thank you :)
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