BIVOUAC XALUCA BELLE ETOILE

A tent camp in the Sahara sand dunes, operated by the Kasbah Hotel Xaluca in Erfoud. If you want to get a small taste of the Sahara this is a good choice, but don't expect luxury! The camp itself has one large dining tent and a bunch of bedroom tents. We had tent 36. They are all nearly identical, ours differing slightly by having an extra bed. There are a couple of chairs and a small table, a wire-rack stand for placing your belongings, and a bathroom. The bathroom has curtain dividers between the commode, the sink, and a shower. An incredibly bright LED lights up the bathroom area. Drape a towel over it to make it more pleasant. There was hot water in the evening, but only cool in the morning. A generator runs all night, providing both electricity and noise to the camp. There are two bedside table lamps, but only one electrical plug on each side of the bed. You can charge your phone or have a lamp, but unless you carry more electrical accessories than I do, you can't have both. By the way, the outlets required a great deal of force to push in a plug. There camp has no WiFi, but there was Cellular service. I only got 3G service, and it dropped out a couple of times, but it was enough to check e-mail and post a picture on Facebook. Don't expect fine dining in a tent in the Sahara, but dinner and breakfast were quite good. What do you do in the Sahara sand dunes? Go for a camel ride, of course! We were lucky to have a clear and calm evening to go for a spectacular and very fun camel ride out to the larger dunes to watch the sunset. The winds came up overnight, and we were sandblasted the next morning. We made an effort to get up early to watch the sunrise, but the blowing sand and dust obscured the view.