We have two nights in Fes and the highlight has to be the Medina where amongst its 12,000 lanes and alleyways are some 8,000 stalls or shops selling every imaginable thing from camel’s heads to Leather jackets. A great deal of it is made right here in the Medina. Problem! If you go wandering off by yourself it is just as likely that you will not be seen for days as it really is a maze of alleys the like of which I have never before experienced. We had guides, but even so you had to stay alert. Everything is either carried in by the people or donkey as no vehicles are permitted (I did see the odd Scooter), Coca Cola are reputed to own 150 donkeys in Fes to get their produce in, and I guess their money out.

 

 Also in the Medina, which is the old walled original city centre, are the famous Fes Tanneries, smelly but nonetheless fascinating. This results in the usual flurry of handbag buying amongst the ladies. 

 

 Evening had us dining in a Riad which is a traditional Berber home built around a courtyard. Berber people make no effort to enhance their homes exterior but more than make up for it on the inside. These places are quite breathtaking and a great night was had by all.
Next day we visited a village in the High Atlas Mountains where there  are some who still live in caves. The lady who we visited had lived in her present cave home for something over eighty years, her husband passed away a few years back aged 110, so can’t be too bad for you.

 

The road we now took from Fes to Erfoud goes over the High Atlas Mountains and then down again to an area on the outskirts of the Sahara. This road trip was simply breathtaking as in scenery and fascinating regarding what was going on around us. This area is sparsely populated and what people there are, are mainly Nomads. These people live a quite extraordinary life, moving from the Sahara at the end of winter to the cooler mountain ranges for summer. They live in family groups and have a flock of sheep and or goats and a couple of donkeys. The men shepherd their flocks by day and then coral them in a rock walled pen for the night. Once each week or two they will take a sheep into a town market where it will be sold to buy provisions. The women go off each day by donkey to get water and make quite a colourful sight. Their dwellings are very basic, stone affairs rooved with sheets of polythene. The government has tried to get them to send their children to free state boarding schools, but this has not been successful and so now they are employing teachers to travel around with them, living in tents and teaching as many of the children as they can. Morocco has placed education at the top of its priorities and the greatest slice of the budget is spent on it. Even so, only 30 % of women are formally educated. The greatest threat to the Nomads lifestyle is from the Leopards and Wolves which can kill their sheep and goats and this is their only source of income. Incidentally, the goats have two purposes, they provide milk and they act as guard dogs against these predators. An interesting lifestyle, probably better viewed from a tour bus. 

 

 This evening we were taken by Land Cruiser out into the Sahara, out where the big dunes are, this took around an hour and I think the drivers had been watching the Paris Dakar rally. We were soon spread across the dessert and bumping our way to our destination, some camels which would take us into the dunes for the sunset. Although I had seen better sunsets this was a truly remarkable experience and I would rate it as one of my most memorable.