I’m adding two entries here because of the way the blog works I want the entries to be chronological and it just easier to do it this way.

Wow! It’s so hard to remember what I did in the order that I did them and now I’m trying to write about my time. It seems that so much of what I’ve done has ended up becoming one big day in the van traveling around Morocco. I’ll do my best though to weed through it and give it some order.

Midelt

After leaving Fes we headed to our next big adventure riding camels in the Sahara, but before we get there we will have about three nights at smaller stops. The first was a one-night stop at a town called Midelt. I say town, but to be honest, I don’t really remember much of a town, I remember a very picturesque farming village where we stopped for the night. Our tour leader took us out for an evening walk to a gorge about 5 km away. I really enjoy walking and when you’re in a new area, everything is just interesting. The people you pass, the mud buildings, the mosques all seem to be interesting. At one point there was a donkey that was loaded with so many sticks that all you could see of the animal was its legs, just a bundle of sticks walking along. There was also a progression of about 12 women walking into town, you could see them from a distance walking in single file, all very brightly dressed. Some of us were speculating that they were coming in for the night to visit friends, or maybe to go to the mosque.

Along the way to Midelt, we stopped at a place where monkeys ran free. Although I can’t seem to spell the type of monkeys they were, it sounds like miccack (and spell check isn’t helping). They were everywhere and they roamed where they wanted. I had seen shows where the same kind of monkeys in India will attack people and steal cameras, watches, and even break into homes, so the fact that these were well behaved was kind of nice.

The gorge

The next night we spent on the outskirts of the small town, Erg Chebbi. This was kind of surreal in some ways. We made our way through the town until we ended on a very narrow road. The road was packed with cars and people everywhere, there was a riverbed, with a small creek running on one side and on the other was a huge cliff. There was another cliff on the far side of the river bed as well. Anyway we made our way through the cars and came up to a couple of hotels on the farside of the riverbed. So strange, there was a creek with a board as a makeshift bridge, a dry riverbed, then the hotels. What happens when the water really starts to flow, do they close the hotels? Regardless it was beautiful. The cliffs on either side rose probably 100 meters, but maybe even higher. Except for a small sliver of sun everything was in the shade.

After we got settled we headed out for about a 10km walk through a valley not far away. The area was what you might imagine Vietnam to be like. It was very green, different crops growing in every useable space, the irrigation was done by either blocking a stream or opening it. Each plot of land was marked by small mud fences that looked like rice paddies like Vietnam. According to our guide, each farmer has a day or time that they can divert the water to their own crops. It was a long walk but very relaxing wandering our way along watching the farmers groom their crops and donkeys hauling other crops out. I haven’t mentioned it, but donkeys are big here, I mean really big, they’re everywhere you look doing much of the hauling.

After our walk we headed back to the hotel for dinner… which I might add I didn’t eat. I was still feeling bad and the thought of eating was the furthest thing from my mind.