Morocco: The Sun Rise in the Sahara and Sun Down in the Mountains

The next morning, I woke to find a little black and white cat sleeping in front of me, just waiting for me to open my eyes. Then it cuddled up next to me and fell asleep purring. (cats are everywhere in morocco, not dogs and this one follows the camels to the camp occasionally, I wish I had taken his portrait, but it was too dark) We got up and onto our camels in the dawn, and were on our way. I took one of the blankets with me to stay warm this time. We rounded a few dunes and then stopped to watch the sun rise over the sand.  A once in a lifetime experience. We then got back to where our bags were and tried to have showers, but like many other places….no hot water. So on our way we went.

On our way to our next Riad we stopped along side the road to see one of the hand dug wells, one of  many of thousands, for an underground water system. All we could think of was the Goonies, and we kept repeating quotes from the movie. Pretty soon, the poor man showing us started calling my husband Mikey, because we had asked him “where the gold was ” so many times. We slept in the car much of this day. The desert trek exhausted us all. We went through the Tondre Gorge on the way and had a nice little lunch at the end of it. We arrived at our Riad late in the afternoon, after we were convinced that Omar had gotten us lost (he pretended not to stop and ask direction from some old Berber man, but I had a sneaking suspicion the back yards he had just driven through were not a regular route) It was definitely a room with a view (but only kind of luke warm water…let’s just say deordorant and dry shampoo were my good friends on this trip ) The high atlas mountains on one side and the desert with palm trees on the other.  They greeted us with mint tea and cookies (yum cookies!!) They of course fed us tajine and bread for supper.