From Fes to the desert

 We set out for the desert after breakfast, definitely ready to leave Fes. It was cool up to a point but we had already reached that point. We climbed into the Middle Atlas Mountains, which were green and beautiful. We stopped in Ifrane, a town that’s known as the Switzerland of Morocco. Bet you didn’t know there was a Switzerland of Morocco. Well there is and we went there and it’s very cute. And chilly.

It was a school holiday and there were a bunch of people in character costumes, who were mostly loitering with their costume heads off.

There was a carving of an atlas lion. which aside from being the excellent name of the national soccer team, is a real animal, unfortunately no longer living in the wild. 

We then stopped to see some monkeys on the roadside. Some were just chilling, a couple were tending to a baby and a couple were playing in a tree. They were happy to have peanuts tossed to them.

Then it was a couple of hours of driving into and through the mountains up to the edge of the High Atlas Mountains, which were snow-covered. Then we followed a river and adjacent oasis for a long time. Oases do not look like the ones in cartoons, like a little island with a single palm tree, someplace to get water, and perhaps a comely maiden. They look like strips of green running through what seems like an endless expanse of brown. 

After some time, we arrived in Arfoud (or Erfoud), where we were dropped at our hotel. This hotel was kind of in the middle of nothing except for a couple of other hotels. Those were larger and apparently cater to groups. Our hotel was small and the grounds are a work in progress- piles of paving stones everywhere. It became clear pretty quickly that we were the only guests there, so for example, dinner felt very formal with two people who had nothing to do except tend to us. 

There certainly wasn’t anything to do there, so we hung out in the room and wrestled with the TV for a little while before resorting to streaming Parks and Rec again, which worked okay until there was a minute left in the episode and then it would go no further, so eventually we went to bed. Touring the area and then off to the desert tomorrow.