Nov 18/09

This should have been an easy day since it was more downhill than up. Naturally, we had a nice consistent headwind all the way to distract from the fun stuff. There was a lot of sand blowing north from the Sahara which left all the hills slightly hidden by a haze. Still, the scenery was beautiful.

The frustrating part of the ride were the kids. They were relentless with their chasing us down asking for pens, money or gifts. My already low opinion of wild children went down considerably, which is actually very hard to imagine! You would think that kids who spend 10 years living on a main road would learn that jumping in front of a moving object might lead to pain, but apparently that lesson has not spread here! In the end, we stayed upright and didn't run over any stupid kids, but it sure left us pretty cranky after a whole day of trying to avoid them.

The town of Zagora isn't much to see. It is a busy, dusty little town with a few shady characters. When we pulled over to look at the guide book and start chosing a place to stay, a few guys walked right up to us and started looking at anything that might be easy to snatch off the bikes. Needless to say we stopped what we were doing and moved on a ways. They got the idea and carried on and we found another quieter spot to look at the map. We wound up camping instead of staying in a hotel. There are several camping spots and some have traditional berber tents that you can rent. We opted for that just for the experience. It was a bit chilly but not bad at all, if you don't mind concrete pillows. This is the second night in a row we have had rock hard beds and pillows. Now we have not had a soft bed since we got to Morocco, so when we describe these beds as hard, think of concrete or asphalt and you will get the idea. I keep waking up in the night with a headache from laying on the pillow too long. Thankfully I have a soft stuff sack for my socks that doubles as a pillow so I put it on top of the rock hard one, but it is still not exactly luxurious! It is authentic though and only temporary so we do laugh about it. Tonight we opted to spend an extra buck and got a room instead. We really only did that because it has a lock and we could lock our bags for the day while we rode camels, but it does feel decadent in comparison.

First thing I experienced this morning was rain. Yes, rain in the desert. Something only a Canadian and a Brit can make happen. Fortunately it only lasted 5 minutes, but it did come directly through the tent roof onto my face just to announce it's presence. Nice! However, the day turned out to be a fabulous one. Dal and I got to ride our camels finally. That was the one mandatory event of the trip for us both. I know it is a bit dorky, but it really was fun. It is so quiet once you get out in the desert and the motion of the camel is pretty hypnotic. We got turbans in the deal and I have to say, they really are great for keeping sand out of eyes/ears/nose etc. We still felt a bit sandblasted by the end of the day but at least my head was somewhat clean.

My camels name was Almed and was more white than Dal's. I got the slower one, but he was much braver when it came to mud and hills. Yes mud… we went through the Palmerie (Oases) which is irrigated so we had some muddy patches to deal with. We had a great lunch and then rode back for the afternoon. Uses different muscles than cycling but was a definite highlight of the trip.