The next morning we woke up and Sean Claude, the owner of our Riad, had breakfast waiting for us. None of us ate much of it. One of our travelers had a misplaced passport and there was a small window of time where we thought our trip might end up completely differently than originally planned. In the end, the passport was found and we were again on our way, this time with a new guide we had hired through a tour company for the next 4 days. His name was Omar.
We traveled though the mid atlas mountains in order to get to the desert. It was freezing cold and pouring rain for the first few hours. The cold rain did not make the local law enforcement very happy as we were pulled over twice for absolutely no reason, except they were grumpy and cold and wanted paid. (bribery among the police in Morocco, we were told is a huge problem, which has been brought to the kings attention, to no avail.) Omar ended up having to pay twice, just to pass through a town. And I will admit, this part of the trip made me a bit nervous. Once the rains stopped, the police eased up. In the mean time we teased Omar he should just hold his hand out the window with some cash as we entered a town….it would save us some time. It was quite amazing to watch the terrain change. There were parts of the trip that looked exactly like Wyoming. Like the stretches between Shoshoni and Casper. It was just like driving through our home state. Omar wondered why we weren’t snapping pictures every 30 seconds, and we told him”this is what we see every day!”
Once we got to the desert, it looked exactly as is does in the movies. Palm trees everywhere. Mud houses and hotels and tents for homes. There were also dinosaurs and fossil shops everywhere!!!! (Africa is a GOLD MINE for dinosaur fossils, which I’m not going to lie, I already knew that, but to see the shops everywhere was a little surprising to me.) It made me miss my son more than I could imagine. Not only did we drive through what looks like home, but there were dinosaurs too….it was hard to keep my mind from wandering back to my kiddo. Omar let me stop at one and take some photos, I only got a small trilobite to take home to my Dino dude, customs wouldn’t be happy if I tried any more than that. But that was that, nor more fossil shops said Omar! After all…we had a date festival to find. (It was date season there, they grow in the palm trees. Omar was constantly looking for a deal on the dates. By the end of our trip….we were out-dated.)
It was not hot though. We were unprepared for the cold of the desert. That night we stayed in a hotel at the sand dunes. We didn’t know what it really looked like though until the next morning. We had more Tajine and couscous. And soup, which was so good since it was cold. Every meal came with thick round bread. We didn’t sleep most of the night as there was a music festival in town, and the party came to the courtyard of our hotel. Made for a sleepless night of listening to drum banging. But it didn’t really bother any of us all that much.
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