Saturday day

Well, after staying out until 4am, getting up for the general session
at 9am wasn’t so easy. I (barely) made it to the 10:45 session, and
heard Cameron of 1-800-Got-Junk again… amazing presentation, I
learned a lot. From there we jumped in a 4×4 and… went
out into the Atlas Mountains. Driving is insane here … second only —
from what I hear — the the insanity of India or China. There are
donkeys, billions of mopeds (sometimes with 2 people and cargo aboard),
horse-drawn carts, crazy Grand Taxi’s (which are all, oddly, Mercedes
Benz), and their smaller compatriots, the Petite Taxis, along with
busses, cars, kids running the street, various animals, and loads of
pedestrians. Lanes are irrelevant, and there are these ridiculous
traffic circles that can fit about 5 cars across. Unfortunately, there
are no lines, so it’s a do-or-die free-for-all of everyone going in
whichever direction they’re supposed to go, with little regard. We had
a couple of near head-on incidents, and heard our fair share of taxi
cab drivers swearing in Arabic and making hand gestures at a moped
driver.
The Atlas trip began slowly, but eventually got more and more
beautiful. The pictures say most of it… it was just nice to ride
through the country-side and see Berber villages, and what “real life”
in Morocco looks like. (I think it’s still hard for me to comprehend
that the markets — souks — aren’t some completely tourist-targeted
swap meet, but a real, centuries-old part of daily life here.)
The coolest part of this trip was … well, besides the madness of our
driver passing donkeys at 140 km/h … was a little “pit stop” we had.
There were berber tents, berber carpets all over the ground, and
gorgeous valley view of an old town, and food and drinks for us. It was
great, I just wished we’d stayed a little bit longer.
We got back to the hotel many hours later — and honestly a little bit
sore for bouncing all over in a 4×4 all day — and got ready for the
“Gala” event of the trip…. Dar Soukkar