Day 43: Erfoud

Today is the first day of our 9 day trip. 

Plan: Fes to Ifrane to Erfoud

So I woke up at 7, showered and had my second pastry day in a row. Pretty tasty stuff. We had to be at Batha by 8:15. Luckily for me, I had packed the night before so I had some extra time in the morning to do stuff like shave my half-beard (it still hasn't connected to the chin/mustache yet) and clean my room. 

The High Atlas Mountains

On the bus ride, I sat next to Marissa and we talked as a group for like 8 hours straight. I really don't like sleeping on the bus because I figure I'll only be here with this group once in my life and I want to spend the time getting to know them and looking out the window. The transformation of the landscape was amazing. We started out in fertile Fes with rolling hills of fields spread out to infinity. Then we entered the Mid Atlas mountain range, one of the 4 mountain ranges in Morocco, and began to climb up. We saw huge pine forests, tons of rocks, and big open flat valleys. We took a break in the town of Ifrane where there is Morocco's equivalent to an Ivy League college. Ifrane is a ski town half the year and was built by the French, so it's very European with man-made ponds, big sidewalks, and good urban planning. Many Fes residents use it as a getaway now but Moroccans weren't allowed to visit or live in the town until after the Independence movement. We took some pictures with a stone lion carving, the only other thing to do in the town besides ski or study in the University. 

We continued driving and actually saw one set of ski slopes, which had a chair lift and two runs. The land scape started becoming flatter and more arid the further we got. Then we found ourselves on a very flat dry plain with the Mid Atlas behind us and the High Atlas mountains in front of us. They had huge peaks that still had snow on them! We stopped for lunch at a very nice restaurant outside the town of Midelt and had a buffet. The food. Was. So. Tasty. I also got a Moroccan beer with lunch, a Flag Special, because I had read in Lonely Planet that more of those are consumed every year than the leading brand of bottled water. It wasn't bad but it came in a funny little bottle. I don't know enough beer terminology to dissect the flavor/consistency nor do I know enough beers to name the equivalent American beer. There was also a really cool fossil museum attached to the hotel that Meredith, Marissa, Si Ron, Elle, and I explored. We took some fun pictures with dinosaurs. 

In the fossil museum

Once we started driving again, we began weaving our way through huge canyons and seeing big rock features in the distance. It felt like driving through the American Southwest. It was so pretty.

Driving

More driving

We got to Erfoud at like 4 and had the rest of the afternoon to ourselves. The hotel, Xaluca, was gorgeous and had two pools and a hot tub. It was modeled after a casbah and the rooms were really nice. I stayed with the boys like always. In the afternoon, we went swimming for a couple hours. Dinner was another buffet and then afterwards, we drank mixed drinks in a tent while listening to music. When the group fragmented, Elle, Marissa, and I went to their room and had a danced party and jumped on the beds. It was a super fun night and I ended up falling asleep there.