Charizard and Ken

August 9

We woke up around 5am during sunrise, rooster noises, and loud hee-haw donkey noises! The sunrise was beautiful over the Atlas Mountains, but it started to rain on us so we quickly moved our mattresses back down! For breakfast, we had mint tea of course! We also had hot water to put instant coffee and hot chocolate in- yum! There were slices of bread and bowls of honey and fig jam (best jam ever). It was a really good breakfast! I just love their mint tea and fig jam!! Something funny happened- bees were getting stuck in the honey! I bet it was their honey anyways, sorry bees!

So we packed up all of our stuff on the donkeys and started our hike to the next village. We were told that the hike was about 4 hours away… it ended up being a 10-hour hike!! We walked through the huge riverbed since it was completely dried out. We passed many villages filled with women working and a lot of dogs and sheep! One big mountain had a village on a steep slope and we got some great photos! There was an old women in one village who had a huge bundle of sticks on her back while she was hiking up the mountainside, I bet she was 70! When we passed by some grazing sheep, the locals were putting two of them in a donkey basket and the donkeys were carrying them away as they were baa-ing. The guide said they were taken away to be slaughtered for dinner… sad but true! Our guide picked some more figs for us up in a high fig tree and I think I ate about 50. They are just so delicious! I will definitely miss hiking in Morocco and stopping to pick fresh figs whenever I want. On part of the hike, we would find mule shoes that had fallen off. We collected them and clipped them to our backpacks! It’s a nice little memory of this trip and it was free, no bargaining involved. :)

We stopped under some trees after hiking for an hour in the sand and dirt with no shade or breeze! It definitely felt like Africa.. We kept getting higher and higher and the views just got better and better. In the distance you could see valleys and hills for miles, we were so high up!! They guides brought dried figs and mixed nuts with little biscuits as a yummy snack every time we stopped. What took us 10 hours to hike was that we stopped whenever we wanted just to hang out and relax. We were in no rush and just wanted to soak up the views; it was perfect!

We stopped for lunch in a forest. It was shady and cool, and filled with tall pine trees! For lunch, they prepared big trays of tomatoes, onions, olives, corn, and all that other stuff mentioned before! This time we got big juicy oranges too! We had mint tea, bread, and the typical meal stuff we’ve been getting. We had pasta this time, along with potato soup! Yum. We sat under the trees for a few hours and a few people took naps. It was so relaxing! There was a lot of thunder the entire day and it was overcast- making the weather PERFECT. It sprinkled for about 5 minutes but we just got super lucky that there was no heavy rain. I still can’t believe how lucky we got because the thunder was so loud and the clouds were very dark!

We left the first village around 7:30am and finally made it to the next one at 5:30ish! It looked very similar to the last place and the bed/room situation was the same, but much more dirty… It was quite the experience. As soon as we unloaded the donkeys and put our bags in rooms, it quickly started to POUR rain! Perfect timing! We all sat under the roof and felt the cool mist from the rain outside while we drank hot mint tea and played cards! As soon as the rain passed, it was much cooler outside and we wandered around the village. A few of us hiked up a big hill and found a man’s farm with a lot of goats! He tried talking to us, but it was unsuccessful, so we just took pictures and showed him- he loved it! The sun started setting (and it was BEAUTIFUL) so we headed back to the place where we were staying for the night. We all went up to dinner on the rooftop (couldn’t sleep there this time…) and ate these delicious, fresh hot sopapia things! They were identical to sopapias actually, but we had no honey. It was tasty. While we were all sitting in a circle, Mikey had the greatest idea every- a massage train! We all had sore backs from hiking with bags and such, so it was wonderful.

It started to rain a little more so we all went inside the dusty rooms and played Mash! While we were playing and watching the rain out of a beautiful painted window, the guides and locals were playing drums and singing some songs. There was also a strange game being played. A man would tie a string around his neck and at the end was a spoon, almost touching the ground. He would stand over a board with a lit candle and try to put it out with the spoon without catching his pants on fire! It was entertaining and a strange game that they made up. I’ll be writing about it for part of my project in intercultural communications!
There was a family that lived in a house on the roof and the little girls brought out henna. I asked her to trace over the one I got last night and she had no idea what I was saying, so I just let her do her thing. She started on my wrist, covered my entire hand and all of my fingers, and then continued it on the palm of my hand! After both sides of my hand were covered in beautiful flowers and swirly designs, she grabbed my other one! Luckily, she only did the top of my hand so I could have one free hand to brush my teeth and stuff. I had to sit on the roof for about an hour and let it all dry! Everyone got henna that night because it was so pretty!

We had more melon for dessert again and then headed down for some much needed sleep! About every 30 minutes someone will yell, “We are in AFRICA!” and everyone cheers. Haha I miss that, I miss Morocco!