"Gift"

Wednesday for the most part does not merit mention, because we were on the sweltering bus through the middle of nowhere from 5am until early afternoon. We arrived in possibly the worst city in Morocco , because the entire city is fillled with faux guides that want to drive you to Merzouga, which is right next to this Aladdin esque chain of sand dunes. We avoided the faux guides and got to Merzouga as fast as we could on our own. We managed to find a hotel where we could sleep on the terrace for 30dh, or about 3.75 dollars. It was even better than a room because the rooooms were quite stuffy. We took a little excursion to the nearby "town"..... read........there were a few sand builldings and dirt roads........and bought food. We mainly just relaxed by the swimming po ol, but we did excur to the dunes for some picture taking and wandering. At night the hotel staff pu t on an incredible show of Berber music and dancing, and then we all went out to the dunes and the music continued in a repeat of Sunday n ight.

It was so nice and such a great plave to stay that I seriously considered staying another day, but I decided I needed to get on my way. The girls decided to stay, so I left for Rissani on my own on Thursday morning. I spent all day on the bus on T hursday, and f inally arrived in Azrou around 5ish. I actually had to take another bus to get to Meknes, my final destination, but I was hot and exhausted and a cool, peaceful mountain town sounded like a good place to spend the night. With the help of a few friendly people, I found my way into town and got a cheap hotel. I set off in search of an interney cafe, and when I asked for one the guy did not speak anything other than Arabic and directed me to someone else, who spoke a minimal amount of Spanish. Luckily, "internet" is pretty universal. He took me to one, and then asked if he could take me out to a cafe after ......I know I know, sketchy freebies. it seemes pretty harmless, though, and I was eager to meet someone in the area that could help me out with bus schedules, etc, so I said okay. Driss ......minimal Spanish speaker. .....and his best friend Radouane......very good French speaker.......hung out for a wh ile. It must have sounded ridiculous, the two of them speaking Arabic, Driss and I speaking Spanish, Radouane and i speaking French.....

So Driss decided that he wanted to give me a "gift" and have a friend of his do henna for me. Now we all know how I feel about having ink all over m y hands, even in pretty patterns, but at the same time I could tell they really wanted to do it for me, so I said fine. 2 hours later, I had flowers and vines all over my hands and ankles. They definitley willl not be gone for the time s chool starts. Oh well, it made for good pictures and maybe with some extra scrubbing I can get it off soon.