Going from the desert to Fes was the only really long day of driving. It was about 7.5 hours, and Abdul dropped us off in Fes around 5 pm.

What can I say about Fes? Not much, unfortunately, except that I need to go back. My time in Fes was analogous to someone traveling to NYC but only visiting Times Square and the Port Authority. I was there for about 15 hours and my heart felt like a clenched fist the whole time. So…the pictures from Fes itself consist of: the inside of the (beautiful) guesthouse and shots taken while walking/running to the bus station.

Following that will be 1,000 pictures of Chefchaouen. It was like a sunset in that way. I knew I already had hundreds of blue pictures, but I just couldn’t resist taking one more. Click through for photos and commentary (and for no commentary on most of the Chefchaouen pictures, because I didn’t want to mar the blue…instead, just imagine this song playing on repeat):

Question:

Is it okay to ride a camel?

I thought about this during our drive to Merzouga, while we rode the camels into the dunes of the Sahara (side note: when examining a map later, I discovered we were in a hilariously small piece of desert…still technically Sahara, though), and afterwards.

It seems like there’s a spectrum: You don’t ride on dolphins. You don’t ride giant tortoises. You possibly shouldn’t ride on elephants (maybe? I think more people would say it’s okay to ride an elephant than a dolphin?). But you definitely can ride horses.

…camels?

When is it okay to ride an animal? And when is it okay to OWN an animal? If it’s domesticated and seems to like it? If it’s small?

I don’t know. From a strength perspective, camels are perfectly capable of carrying a human, although it’s terrifying to watch a camel stand up–like a snorting, grumpy accordion. These camels didn’t have names, which made me vaguely sad.

Pictures and commentary from Day 3 of the desert (click through):

On day 1 of the desert part of our tour, I had finally started to feel–not normal, again, yet, but like I could remember what normal felt like. When we left the mountains I figured I was on the mend, especially as we descended, but the overall nausea and lack of appetite continued as we made our way to Ouarzazate.

And then in the middle of the night that night, I came down with a 24-hour stomach thing. Honestly, I was happy enough to have that instead of the weird malaise I had traded for it. At least I understand what’s going on with stomach trouble.

Click through for pictures/captions:

Last mountains, I promise. New topographies coming next post.

The final day of hiking was also eight hours, and while eight-hour Day 3 was my favorite, Day 4 almost ended me. I’m not totally sure what happened–I want to say that I had altitude sickness, but we were only ever as high as 2500 meters, which isn’t really enough to do it. I already had a head cold when we got to the mountains, though, and that + the higher altitude + exertion every day did something to me.

I woke up in the middle of the night with a vague, all-over nausea, which got worse when I tried to eat breakfast, and didn’t exactly get better as I hiked up another mountain. So there are fewer pictures (and fewer captions; you can pretty universally apply a Claire thought-bubble of “Please don’t throw up” or “Just take two more steps” to every picture), but click through for the Mountains: conclusion:

I sat next to a very charming child and her…babysitter? family friend? as they played twenty questions. The best questions were the child’s asides:

“Do you know what stop is ours so that we aren’t on the train for THE REST OF OUR LIVES?”

and

“If you looked in them mirror would you be like, “ahh! I’m a monster!”?”

 

Older woman, reassuringly, to her older husband, who had just been offered a seat on the train by a young woman: “You’re not elderly.”

Older man: “No, I’m pregnant.”

 

The experienced half of a busking duo to the less experienced half, who was looking very concerned when they got to the end of the car: “Oh. Are we on the island thing? Oh! Are you feeling nervous about walking between cars?”

Other half: “…YES.”

 

Woman walking down the street, presumably horrified either at herself or her daughter for holding onto something OLD: “I had that when I was pregnant with her! She’s THIRTY!”

I’ve been trying to cobble together the route that we took through the mountains based on google maps, pictures, and my iPhone’s “Steps” app, which miraculously tracked how many steps I took even though my phone was on airplane mode, out of range of any wifi, and across an ocean from Sprint. We didn’t follow the planned route (which I have information about/names of towns) due to snow conditions and also lack of poncho conditions, so I’m guessing somewhat.

Also, I mostly remember the two-syllable villages.

I think on the second day our lunch stop may have been at Tizi n’Tamatert (Tizi being the word for “mountain pass”), and after lunch we went through Ikkiss and then down into a valley to spend the night…maybe Tamatert or Ait Souka?

Day three we hiked eight hours: up one mountain, down that mountain and back through Taddert, which is near Imlil (where we spent the night on our first day), then up another mountain, passing through Matate on our way to a magical plateau, which might have been Imi Ourhlad? I’m fairly certain we spent night three in the foothills in the village of Asni. Click through for pictures:

When we left Essaouira we drove to the Atlas Mountains with our guides Hassan and Jamal, who told us upon meeting, “We’ve been awake for 24 hours!” Hassan began the getting-to-know-you process by asking where we were from, and then saying, “American, American. Yes. Lovely-jubbly.”

Then he got a phone call from his boss and, after hanging up, said, “So, kidding. It turns out I am not your guide, actually,” because his boss had told them to go home and take a nap. So they drove us to the mountains and we met Ibrahim, our mountain guide, and Mohammed, the cook and muleteer (and Jacqueline the mule). Here are pictures from the first two days (click through for more/commentary).

We landed in Marrakech but left immediately for Essaouira, and spent most of the drive taking pictures out of the windows and trying to nail down the pronunciation of Essaouira. It’s hard to avoid metathesis leading to pronouncing it “Ess-OW-ree-uh.” It’s actually Ess-uh-WEER-uh. I narrowly avoided titling this post “It’s-a-where-a?” so that’s about all of the restraint I have to spare today. Pictures: (click through for more/commentary).

I…can’t turn my back on a pun.

We spent about 22 hours in Lisbon. Topographically, it’s my favorite kind of city: full of hills and near water. Cobblestones, red-tiled roofs, ancient trees. Here are some pictures (click through for more/commentary).

 

Every time it rains I get Garbage’s “I’m Only Happy When it Rains” stuck in my head–not a bad thing–but usually with my friend Mikey-Mike’s (I think it was Mikey-Mike, but if not, it was Lincoln) alternate plumber-jingle lyrics, “We’re only happy when it drains,” to which I add “We’re only happy when you’re constipated” (don’t think about that too long…it doesn’t actually make sense as a business model; it just rhymes with “I’m only happy when it’s complicated”).

It’s usually followed by the zombie version, I’m Only Happy When it’s Brains.

I don’t mind this rain. It’s definitely the least offensive thing about this day, and the least ominous.

I haven’t blogged recently because I was in Morocco for two weeks. Part of my time there was in the Atlas Mountains, hiking and sleeping in gites in the valleys. Two of the four days we went up one mountain, down another, up a different mountain, and down that mountain. On the first day, I had a few different things in my head:

  1. I don’t even want to print this because it’s totally inappropriate and not even something I ever chanted in elementary school…but lo, attempting not to lose my footing on the gravel that covered the goat trails, next to which was a 75 degree cliff with nary a scrub to cling to, it appeared. Suffice to say that it includes the line “I sit on the steeple and pee on the people.”
  2. Amidst the baa-ing of the goats, day two of hiking found the Mario vs. Luigi fight song planted semi-permanently in my brain. You know the one? In Mario 3 for NES, when you’re playing two-player and you hit A at the right time when the other player crosses over you, so that you’re taken to a “battle” during which you try to steal the other plumber’s bonus? See here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1z8tZAyJyo
  3. Heart’s “Alone.”

A week later in Chefchaouen, the blue city, I had this part of Enya’s “Book of Days” cycling through. The entire time. Not mad! It was very fitting. https://youtu.be/LiBwr4U59EI?list=RDJl8iYAo90pE&t=17