Day 5 Travel day

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Day 5

With an early start after our late night we headed off out of Fez. Our first stop was in a wee town Ifrane. It was up in the middle Atlas Mountains....the temperature really dropped, about 2 degrees Celsius. Very pretty town, looked much like we were in Switzerland, as it should it was built by the French and the Swiss. Just down the road we saw a small ski resort that their King and his family like to frequent.

Continuing onward we left behind the cedar forests of the middle Atlas Mountains and our views became much similar to the Grand Canyon with the snow capped High Atlas Mountains in the distance. The forests of palm trees in the oasis became more frequent and this was a moment we both knew we were very far away from home.

Travelling through the Ziz gorge we saw many Kasbahs....there homes. Some built for up to 45 people all out of a red mud, clay bricks. During the afternoon we started to see a presence of many of the Moroccan guards....just standing out along the highway, and in the dessert. As we continued there were more and more, over a 50-75 mile stretch there was likely thousands.

Our tour guide Ann said she could tell the king must be close by. With that we saw the military helicopters and about a row of 100 cars, one of which the King was in. Pretty amazing presence of security for him, King Mohamed the sixth.

After arriving in Erfoud or destination for the day and checking in to our hotel the Kasbah Tizimi, where I must say Kate Winslet has stayed on a few occasions. We had time to freshen up for dinner and what a wonderful meal it was. We had a veggie barley soup to start and then some chicken kebabs with rice and more veggies. For dessert a date tart.

Making it an early night as tomorrow is going to be a very exciting day riding a camel in the dessert to the top of a 450 ft sand dune to sit and watch the sunset. I can't wait.

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