This long road day wasn’t anywhere near done. The drive continued through small villages including one that was holding its weekly market. Precooked tagines sitting outside, smoke billowing from outdoor grills… View image, and fruit sellers sitting on the road. This prompted Aziz’s memory bank and a story surfaced about a tour incident. Aziz had escorted a group into the Rissani weekly market and one man had his pocket, not picked, but cut with a razor blade that the thieves hid between two fingers! The pickpocket was so good that the man didn’t even notice that his pocket had been slashed until they were back on the bus. That’s what you call fast hands… The group then had to spend hours at the police station filling out paper work and, of course, the thief was never caught. That is why Aziz is thrilled when one of his groups doesn’t want to visit one of the crowded markets.

Next stop was to take photographs of the breathtakingly beautiful Ziz River Valley studded with unusual fortified villages. The Ziz valley was once a passage for the Caravan routes linking the Sahara to the Mediterranean. The gorge itself was created by the Ziz River and cuts through the barren Atlas mountains, lined in places with green palm trees and fertile fields where the people raise vegetables, alfalfa, dates and henna. Some young men were standing here (they must spend the entire day waiting for a tourist to come along) selling their homemade leaf camels…View image…

The bottom of the Ziz Valley itself is accessible from Erfoud (our destination today) or at the Source Bleu de Meski (Meski Oasis Blue Spring) and terminates under the Erg Chebbi’s sand sea (heading there in another day). No chance for us to walk down into the gorge but we did give one last stretch of the legs and walk along the canyon edge to better view the amazing adobe villages that looked abandoned.

My personal quirky sight of the day (besides the McDonald’s “McArabia” sign seen a gazillion hours ago) was a man sitting along the road waiting for a bus or taxi. Waiting with… a small refrigerator.

Through Tafilalt area that was once an independent kingdom and into the desert settlement of Erfoud and the Riad Mahd Salam…View image. A very pretty hotel with swimming pool in the center but, we leave at 8:00 a.m. tomorrow. Totally exhausted and very glad that we didn’t eat our picnic lunch today. Instead, the cheese and pita bread made great sandwiches, uncorked the wine, bathed and fell into bed.

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