Travel day to Fez. 9 hours in the van even by highway. Suck it up and do it. Ah, but the things you see when you stay off the highway. We came upon a Fantasia. Think of it as a Moroccan Rodeo. All the local tribes get together for a riding competition. About 30 or so riders all line up and race about 100 meters at full gallop. Then they are all supposed to fire their rifles at the same time so only one bang is heard. This was very cool and well worth the side trip. Some were not so good, others were very impressive. This was the only place I felt a little uncomfortable. Chris and Ahmed went down to the judging area while Ryan, Abdul and I stayed about mid field. Ryan and I stuck together and there were a couple of punk type teenager boys that kept looking back and forth at me. (Blonde women stick out here almost as bad as in Seoul) As soon as Abdul walked up to us they moved on but heck, you get that from teenage boys everywhere. It was still very, very cool to see.
Along the way we traveled though areas where the locals grow a lot of their own produce. Nuts, fruits and veggies mostly. Abdul stopped the van and bought about 5 pounds of cherries for a few durham and they were the sweetest things you ever tasted. We also made a pit stop in the town of Ifrane. Everyone talks about it as the Switzerland of Morocco . It’s at a higher altitude and the architecture is a bit different. I’m glad we made a stop but wouldn’t have spent the night. Fez was close now and we really wanted to get there. Fez was founded around 800 so it’s a little on the old side. When you say that Boston has streets that are paved cow paths, and they do, Fes has alley ways that are single file donkey paths that are barely paved. This was really neat. The only caveat was there are two Riads with very similar names so of course, we go to the wrong one first. After a couple phone calls, Ahmed has us a local guide to take us to the right one. Here is where we are ever so glad we travel light. Three people, three weeks, three bags- that’s it. Damn good thing because it was a 10 minute walk through the Medina to our Riad; and they weren’t going slow for me, you could only move so fast because of the number of people and the size of the alley. The walk was worth it. The place was beautiful and we had two of the nicest rooms on the entire trip. Ahmed arranges for the Riad to have a light dinner for us as we really didn’t want to walk around too much. Fantastic food in a gorgeous courtyard, could it get any better? Yeah, Ryan and I found the stair way to the roof top. Fez at night time was breathtaking. The perfect ending to a long day!