Our wakeup call was at 5:30 and we were on the bus and on our way by 7:00 am because we had to cover 440 km.
Our first stop was in Ifrane, a smaller community located in the High Atlas Mountains. It reminded us of a Swiss village with pointed roofs and modern buildings. They get one to two meters of snow during January and February and there is a ski area nearby! There were even huge concrete snow fences outside of town to keep the snow from drifting over the highway.
There were storks on the roofs and a huge Lion statue along the central boulevard. There are NO lions in this area and haven’t been for many years.
From Infrane, we continued through cedar forests. There are over 18 million acres of forests in Morocco.
In one small town we stopped to stretch and saw all of these people lining up at one of the municipal buildings. They were all in line to get food donations from the government during Ramadan.
There were many Berber tents set up in the area. They were the first inhabitants of Morocco. They are mainly herders of sheep and goats. Ten days after the end of Ramadan, Muslims have a large celebration and everyone wants to buy sheep for their feast. Our guide told us the herders buy the sheep for about $150 USD, raise them, then sell them for $350 after Ramadan. The are semi-nomadic, traveling to these areas to graze their flocks, then moving back to permanent homes after Ramadan.
We also passed a field covered with white flowers. It looked like snow!
We continued our journey and reached an elevation of 6000’. We passed landscapes similar to Wyoming at home. Flat, brown, scrub bushes with mountains in the background. After lunch in Midelt, we continued up through the Ziz Gorges, past miles and miles of date palms.
Dates are a major source of income for the people. They plant over a million date palms each year and each tree can yield about $300 in income and there are thousands of trees. The dates are harvested in August and September.
The oasis are manmade along the river. The major dam in this area was built in 1985 and feeds the river. There are about 135 dams in Morocco, all of which help provide water and hydroelectric power to the country.
We finally arrived at our hotel about 4:30 pm today. We had time to freshen up before heading out on our 4-wheel drive to the Sahara with a brief stop at a Berber family’s home.
After seeing their simple home, we continued to the sand dunes of the Sahara. Tobey, Wendy & I paid extra to ride camels onto the dunes. It was a fun experience. 
Part way through the ride, our guides dressed me and Wendy up in the traditional Berber outfits. We look pretty good!
The dunes are about 30 km long and 50 km wide. It was hard to get a good perception of their expanse, but none of us wanted to spend any more time in the saddle than we did! The Berbers are a hardy bunch of people.
We were back to our hotel about 7:45 and had dinner around 8pm. Tomorrow is a “relaxed” start – 7am wake up call, departure at 8:30!
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