A Day in Morocco

I woke up to light coming in the cracks of the cloth tent ceiling above me. Cozy and warm under the three heavy wool blankets on the queen sized bed, I felt like I had just slept in a nice hotel, rather than a campsite in the middle of the sand dunes of the Sahara.

I slipped out of bed onto the carpeted floor that kept out the fine sand and quickly changed out of my pajamas, hoping to catch the sunrise. Ducking out of the tent flap, I saw we were in luck – although the sky was light the sun hadn’t yet peaked up over the large dune to our east. We climbed up out of the small valley of our campsite, and waited for the sun to rise over the quilt of sand dunes surrounding us.

The dawn was beautiful. The sky was light blue and pale yellow, lighting the rusty orange dunes that stretched out as far as we could see in all directions. The sky grew brighter and brighter and the blazing yellow glow of the rising sun slowly crested over the dunes. I went for a walk, my footprints blending with the prints of smaller animals in the soft sand. I made sure not to lose my direction in my circuit of the never-ending dunes. When we got back, the guys having taken their fill of photographs of the dunes in the morning light, we packed up and mounted our camels again, as our Berber guide Mohammed, who'd played cards with us the night before, led us back to civilization.

Showers and a hot breakfast were in order. The showers were warm and soothing, in the traditional mud and straw building of our hotel. Afterwards we piled into the car for our long car ride up to Fes, back through the Atlas Mountains. We were prepared for spending many hours in the car as we crossed the country. We were not prepared to hit a snowstorm. The mountains with their cedar forests were beautiful, but after awhile the rain turned to snow turned into a semi white out in some parts, as our view was reduced to the fifty feet around us. The views continued to be beautiful, snow falling on the cedar forests and dusting the empty fields that surrounded us. We passed the occasional shepherd, standing in the cold dressed in his traditional Moroccan djellaba with his flock of sheep and goats. Thankfully, the craziness of Moroccan driving did not extend into snowy conditions and drivers were unusually cautious through the mountain passes.

We decided to drive straight to Fes and skip the scenic stops, since the trip was taking longer than we thought it would. We arrived in Fes well after dark and found a parking place close to our hotel without getting lost too many times. And, as we stepped through the door of our hotel in a back alley of the medina (old city), we realized we had moved into a palace. An old traditional building, the hotel consisted of several large beautiful rooms surrounding two courtyards of orange trees and fountains.

After settling in for a half hour and filling out the required forms, we went looking for dinner before everything closed. We were too late to eat at the place recommended in the guide book, Clock Cafe, so we ended up eating at a place down the street. A perfectly decent traditional meal of kefta (meatballs), tagine (meat and vegetables slow cooked in an oven for a long time) and couscous, followed by the standard dessert of tangerines and mint tea. Full and exhausted, we returned to our hotel and quickly fell asleep. An amazing day in our travels in Morocco.