October 8 Itinerary: We travel to the town of Erfoud, built by the French and known for its red sand buildings that contrast with the surrounding desert. We stop in Midelt in the Atlas Mountains with wonderful landscape views.

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Thankfully no dog choirs last night. My eyes no longer have their own luggage.

Today was a LONG travel day as we head to the Sahara, driving almost 450 km. We have to trust that it will all be worth it tomorrow when we get to experience a part of the world we never expected to visit.

To paraphrase the words of the famous song, it was a long long road with many a winding turn.

We were on the road just 10 minutes behind scheduleat 8:40 a.m. headed into the Middle Atlas Mountains for what we’d been forewarned was a drive of 7+ hours (PLUS breaks) on 2-lanes roads. What no one told us was that many pf the roads are brand new; so new that barriers have not yet been installed, even on some of the sections bordered by mountain on one side and cliff on the other.

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The first town of any size that we passed after leaving Fes was the Berber town Imouzzer-Kandar, meaning waterfall. Although only an hour from Fes, the climate here is completely different, due to an increase in elevation from 414m/1358 ft to 1345m/4413feet. Imouzzer gets annual snow, making it a winter ski resort, and has lots of water – enough that it has a huge golf course (the only one we’ve seen here).

Snow means the architecture is also very different from what we’ve seen so far, with peaked roofs to prevent snow accumulations.

Cool nights are ideal for fruit trees, especially apples! Later in October they’ll hold their annual apple festival

Our first rest stop just after 10 o’clock was in Ifrane, a town whose name means cave in the Berber dialect. This town in the Middle Atlas Mountains is nicknamed “the Switzerland of Morocco”, and really does look like a modern European ski resort town. We’d now risen to an elevation of 1665m/5463 ft.elevation. Up here, the town regularly gets accumulations of 40-50 cm (15-20 inches) of snow! They also get storks!

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As we left Irfan to continue heading south and east, we encountered a family of macaques on the roadside!

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Then for around an hour it was just sheep, sheep sheep, and nomadic Berber shepherds.

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We passed through another very small Berber town of Zaida, famous for their apples. From the vantage point of our bus barreling past the apples displayed in the roadside stands looked large and tasty.

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The Middle Atlas Mountains are almost completely sedimentary rock. We passed a table rock that was just one of many formations reminded both me and Ted of Sedona, Arizona.

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Our second stop was at 12:30 for an la carte lunch at HOTEL TADDART ( taddart means “my house” ) in Midelt, a town that was home to the largest military post during the French occupation of Morocco. The restaurant was beautiful outside and in, and smelled gloriously of cinnamon as soon as we entered, although no cinnamon was evident in our food. In some cases, our actual food was not evident! Several menu items, on a short menu, were not prepped yet at noon, but even when our group ordered from what was available, not everyone got what they ordered. During a 2 hour lunch service, soup arrived last, and some desserts not at all. I was the only person at our table got their entire meal.

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Nonetheless, fed or not, we needed to get on our way.

The roundabouts at either end of Midelt feature giant apples, one green and one red.

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The next portion of our trip required winding down through and around the mountains on brand new roads. As if the mountain roads weren’t scary enough, we narrowly missed hitting a donkey that stepped out in front of our moving bus!

Meandering through the reddish and beige-tinged rocks and sandy landscapes were miles of silvery-looking dry river beds, like the section below. These won’t be full of water again until the rainy season, which is concentrated between the end of November and end of February.

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Everything else is just dry rock right now, although the mountai s do look impressively large.

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What’s really amazing is that there are people living out here – except for the telltale power wires, it seems so very isolated. Yet, we passed schools, and mosques, and father-and-son goatherds, and saw kids playing soccer, in areas where there were no other buildings or homes to be seen!

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This was not a mirage, but the Barrage Al-Zhassan Addakhil, a basin created by a dam built under the rule of the current King’s father, Hassan II.

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Our third rest stop at 4:45 p.m. was a small local service centre/cafë/grill in Errachidia, where Ted and I each grabbed a chocolate bar to tide us over until dinner.

The final leg of our journey took us through a small desert settlement in Ziz (first collage below) and a huge date palm oasis just outside Erfoud. Unfortunately it was impossible to get a good picture of the latter from the moving bus. We also passed roadside vendors selling dates, but had no time to stop. Hopefully tomorrow.

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We arrived at our accommodation, Kasbah Hotel Tombouctou. in Merzouga at 7:30 p.m., back down at an elevation of only 808m/2650 ft above sea level. All of us were tired of simply sitting in a bus all day, so didn’t really appreciate how authentically lovely this desert kasbah and spa really is. What we did notice was that the buildings were so dark that it was almost treacherous finding our second floor room.

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Our group wake-up call tomorrow is 5 a.m., since we’re heading into the Saharan dunes to watch the sun rise over Erg Chebbi, a huge expanse of sand dunes just north of us.