Where’s the Star Trek beaming technology when you need it? We left our camp in the desert via camel around 7:30 am. It was about an hour walk and we left the pickup spot shortly after. We arrived in Fes ELEVEN HOURS LATER, and most of that was spent riding in a very cramped bus. As you may be able to tell, this left me very jangled and cranky.

But the desert in the morning was just as beautiful as it was last night. I got significantly better at riding my camel. I didn’t name this one, and I wasn’t on Weeble anymore (yesterday’s camel, I can’t remember if I mentioned his name). The camels were ready to be up and going and were not interested in staying kneeling long enough for people to get on them. One stood up while Alrica was still mounting, and the one behind me took several tries before he would kneel long enough for his rider to get on. During all of this, the drover actually said, “I’m going to kill this camel one of these days.” And I was relieved that he wasn’t talking about my camel until that one, who I think of as, “that Devil Camel,” kept getting very friendly with my pant leg. I would look behind and down and there would be his teeth! The drover said not to worry, camels are vegetarian, but that wasn’t actually reassuring. After we stopped to watch the sunrise, I figured out how to ride with my right leg up in front of my saddle so that Devil Camel could not reach my pants to take a bite out of. Now, he may have just been a very friendly sort of camel, but between Frisco trying to pull off my saddle blanket yesterday, and the “I’m going to kill this camel” comment from this morning, I just didn’t have any interest in trusting him. I ended up on a different string of camels from Ryan and the cousins, and when we got to the drop off place Erich took a video of me riding in, and even came up with a theme song while he was at it. It was kind of fun and apparently I’m now, “Michelle of the Maghreb.”

Lunch was at around 2:00 pm. If you’re keeping track, we left our camels around 8:30 am. We stopped once around 10 when one lady asked for a toilet break. The stop actually sold snacks, but we were all still thinking that we’d be stopping about every 2 hours or so for a stretch/toilet break, so nobody bought any. When we did finally stop for lunch, Erich staged a mini-revolt and instead of eating at the restaurant we stopped at, our group walked about 10 minutes and found a lovely little sandwich shop that was half the price of the other one. We were able to have something other than tajine for about half what we would have paid otherwise.

After lunch, we stopped very briefly to see the Barbary Apes, I think Ryan may have gotten a picture of one. The tourists and various enterprising people (who want to be paid) feed them, so there was a lot of them alongside the road.

Finally, we stopped again and found a little market where I bought some Cheetos and Pringles. Neither tasted quite like they do at home, but I was quite ready for something that tasted like American snack food.

When we got to Fes, we witnessed an altercation in a traffic circle that was quickly devolving into an outright brawl. No punches had been thrown before we made it through, but some person in a car was being violently berated by several other people who were outside the car. After we got through the new part of the city, and I think it may have been rush hour, if they have that here, our driver dropped us off at the Blue Gate as our riad is inside the Medina, which does not allow any motor traffic. A 5 minute walk and we got here, and I am now safely ensconced in our room, by myself (Ryan escaped) writing down the day’s events.

Tomorrow is a relaxation/shopping day in Fes. Breakfast isn’t until 9:30, so we’ll be able to sleep in a bit before diving into everything.

A few pictures from today…