This morning we woke up at 6 to be on the bus by 7. Even though our AC didn’t work and I was bonding with my awesome towel that I bought at the Wal-Mart in Canada, I had to abandon the towel and actually get under the covers because it was freezing. But we made it on the bus and I was reunited with my Nalgene, which had been eaten by the bus the day before.

***Mom please skip ahead to the next paragraph. Thanks***

So our 8-hour bus ride from Marrakech to Zagora was probably the worst bus ride ever. Our bus driver, while I believe he is a very good driver, likes to be a little bit of a daredevil and speed up around corners rather then brake like a normal person. Normally, I wouldn’t really mind this, but when we are driving through the High Atlas Mountains in a tour bus and going around sharp curves where we could go tumbling off the edge, I tend to care. Right after we stopped at a little shop on the side of the road for people to go to the bathroom and a few other people bought crafts. Mackenzie and I loaded up on food – go figure. So we are driving to our next stop – lunch. Our bus driver comes around a corner and a truck was in our lane. He slammed on his brakes and got the bus over to the shoulder. Luckily we were on the rock side rather then the cliff side. He barely missed the truck on one side and the rock face on the other. Everyone on the bus was sleeping except for a few people, so most everyone slammed into the seat in front of them. I used the mom arm bar to save Mackenzie. If we had hit that truck, it would have gone over the cliff and I don’t really know what would have happened to the bus. Granted, he was going around the corner a bit fast, but the truck was in our lane, and he did a heck of a job avoiding an accident. We quickly made an impromptu stop so the bus driver could calm down. Jamal got the hand of Fatima amulet to ward off evil spirits from the roadside vendor haha. We eventually made it to lunch safe and sound.

***Mom you can begin reading here***

Lunch was ok. It started with bread and a salsa like dish with carrots and potatoes. Next was another veggie dish and finally the meat course. We had kebabs and they were scrumptious. Still no pigeon though. We asked Jamal and he said they don’t really eat pigeon. Weirdly, I was slightly disappointed.
We got back on the bus and the rest of the drive was uneventful, but as Eddie said “You guys put on your seatbelts. I’m not joking.” We decided to would be safest to buckle up.
We arrived in Zagora and were greeted by our camels and nomads. They didn’t have enough camels for all of us, so we had to pair up. I think that was really dumb on SAS’s part, but whatever. They keep preaching to be flexible, so I just went with it. We trekked for about 45 minutes and then we switched. I rode a camel I named Elvis. Ok just a quick note on getting on a camel. I was thinking it really wouldn’t be that hard – it would be kind of like riding a horse. Not quite. They are sitting/kneeling when you get one. Once you are on, they start to stand up with their back legs so you pitch forward and then backward and then basically thrown every other direction. If you managed to hold on through all that then you are ready for a pretty bouncy ride. But anyway, I named him so because he had some sweet sideburns. Elvis was a bit harrier then the rest of the camels. The camels in my train were named Jared, Jafar and Speedy McSmokes. When we got to our camp, there were nomads singing and dancing. We got our tent assignment and dropped our packs. Dinner wasn’t for another 2 hours, so we climbed to the top of a dune and watched the sun go down. It is crazy to think that here I am not quite in the dunes of the Sahara watching the sunset with some nomads.
We went back to camp and sat around waiting for dinner. The nomads started singing and dancing again and before I knew it everyone was up dancing and trying to sing with them. We really did more clapping and laughing then actually singing because we had no idea what they were saying.
We ate dinner at 2030 so that everyone could eat at the same time because of Ramadan. The meal started off with bread and a salsa dish…of course. I think I eaten my weight in bread while in Morocco. The main dish was a Moroccan twist on beef stew and it was soooo good. Dessert was some sort of melon that I am going to call Nomad Melon. It was delicious, considering that I don’t like fruit,
We spent the rest of the night talking, which was occasionally interrupted by more singing and dancing and clapping. We eventually got a got a game of mafia going, which I hadn’t played since probably 6th grade. My neighbor on the ship (and in the hotel in Marrakech and in the namad…this seemed to be a reoccurring theme) Bryan, decided it would be fun to kill me off every time. Thanks…what happened to love thy neighbor? Anyway, when it was time for bed, we dragged our mats out of the tent so we could sleep under the stars. We were given a mat, 2 sheets, a pillow and a THICK wool blanket. There was sand all in the blankets so therefore in all of our beds. No matter how much you brushed off more appeared. We finally gave up and tucked our pant legs in our socks (to avoid from anything crawling up there like the scorpion that was found) and settled into our sandboxes. We all feel asleep looking at the stars in our little pow wow of beds.