DAY 112

Today we didn't have any cooking lessons because we went on a little excursion that took most of the day. Today was a gorgeous morning and the sun was out and gave us that right amount of heat while we sat by the pool and ate our breakfast. A little bit after lunch we got in the car and drove about 1 1/2 hours to the Atlas Mountains. At the base of the mountains there are all these little villages, we went to the village of Tahanoute, where they had a very rual Souk. Here we saw everything being sold from clothing, to things for the house, to toys, then there was also the food, there was a vegetable and fruit section, a section just for grains, then there was the meat section. I was OK with seeing all the meat and the hooves and the skins, even the heads, the only thing that kind of bothered me was this one head of this sheep its eyes hadn't glazed over or anything, and it was looking straight at me. KINDA CREEPY, if you ask me. There were even barbers, there was this one stall and this little boy was getting his hair cut and he had this look on his face like "I better be getting a REALLY big present for this torture" and then the other kid, I guess his brother, was sitting on the mom's lap crying. This one place that was trying to sell stuff completely did over Jeff and Sam so the both looked like they should have been extras for Lawrence of Arabia, it was a good laugh. One of the big transportations is the Mule, even in the city you see them everywere, even when your stopped at the stoplight they're right there next to you parked. Anyways since that's most peoples way of getting around especially this rually, is by mule at this Souk there is Mule Parking. It's really funny looking, and it looks like somthing out of a western movie, excpet mles instead of horses, but the same idea. Well after the Souk we kept on driving till we reached this Berber village, called Imil, that we had to park the car. This is because at this point the mountain does not have a road anymore, there is a worn in path, but not any bigger than a person and a half wide. Our final destination was this restaurant, that's also a small hotel, named Kasbah du Toubkal, that is at about 13,000 feet. This area were we were going is the setting for the 1996 Martin Scorzese movie "Kundun." To get to this place hpwever we had to ride mule up the mountain. This gave me an instant flashback to when I was younger and used to go on those donkey trips were we would go out for a week and trek though the Cascade Mountains. When we got to the place and we were greeted by the guy who had us do some ritual thing before going up onto the roof balcany for lunch. He took the silver, baster looking, thing, which was filled with orange blossom water, to "cleanse" our hands. He took the "baster" and sprinkled a couple of drops on our hands and we had to rub it in. Then we had to take a date, dip it in some kind of milk, and then eat it. After this we were led up to were we were eating lunch. The view alone was amazing, it was one of the most breathtaking views ever. I can only just imagine what it must look like in th winter when there is some snow in the peaks. After eating with the most amazing view we took the mules back down to the village and then starting driving back. About half we stop at this place that had some really cool looking fociles, that were found somewhere here in Morocco. We then had alot of free time when we got back to the house. This is mostly due to the fact that there is only 3 of us, so things just don't take that long like they would in a larger group. We then had dinner, all read a little bit afterwards, then headed of to sleep.

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