Berber Villages, day 1

I started the morning with a swim in the hotel pool then met up with Jason for breakfast. The hotel buffet included a small salad bar, which was definitely different than American breakfasts!

Posing with the Moroccan tea service

Then our group hit the road to head into the mountains where we would start our hike. On the way, our guides stopped at one of the many pomegranate stands and bought us a huge bag of the fruit. None of us really knew how to eat them, so they taught us to break them open and pick out the ruby red seeds.We also practiced tossing seeds and catching them in our mouths. 

Our guides picking out pomegranates

My first whole pomegranate!

When we reached the starting point, we met up with our donkeys and mules and loaded them up with all our bags. The poor donkeys have to carry a lot of weight! The morning part of the hike was beautiful, through river ravines and up some hills past olive trees and lots of thorny bushes. We stopped for lunch in an olive grove, then kept climbing past adorable baby goats and lambs. We also learned that donkeys can be VERY loud!

Our guide, Hussain, leading the way.

Happy camper

Lambie! Too bad lambs just like this were served for dinner a few nights...

 Around 3:30 or so we reached the village where we were to spend the night. I have no idea what the village was called, but it had about 20 families and had just gotten electricity and running water about 3 years ago. We stayed with the family of Mohammed, one of our donkey wranglers.

It's hard to see in this picture, but this donkey and owner had just been to the market down in the valley. He's loaded up with all sorts of food including yogurt. Donkey is the primary mode of transportation in the Berber villages.

 After a snack of mint tea and Moroccan "donuts" - fried dough without the powdered sugar, I went in the hammam with three other women, including another faculty member and one of the resident directors. A hammam is like a Turkish bath - a steam room where people scrub themselves down. In big cities there are public hammams; in our small villages most of the homes had a personal hammam. They are essentially tiny concrete and ceramic rooms with very low ceilings. There's a fire place under the floor that heats the room and creates steam. You strip down until you're naked (that was a surprise aspect of the hammam!) then all climb in together and scrub up and rinse off with water from the tap. Moroccan women go in with their friends for 2 or 3 hours at a time, as it is a private place where they can gossip and be sort of free. I only lasted about 30 minutes due to the heat, and later got told by the guide that I needed to stay much longer.

While I bonded with the women on the trip, Jason went off on an adventure with some other members of the group. They hiked around the hills, spoke with a shepherd, and he caught this great picture of a hungry sheep:

Giraffe sheep?

 Later on the boys went in the hammam while the girls started getting henna tattoos. They were done by Fatima, the 16 year old daughter of the owner of the house. She did beautiful designs, although the henna was pretty rustic and has already faded quite a bit. I wasn't sure if I really wanted to do it, but when in Morocco...

She was also a ridiculously fast worker and managed to do 10 of us in an hour and a half.

 We enjoyed a gorgeous sunset.

Looking towards the Atlas Mountains

 Then were served a traditional dinner of soup and tagine with melon for dessert. It was all very good. The flies swarming everything only slightly detracted from the experience, as we had been bothered by them since we first docked in Morocco.

 After dinner some kids decided to play music for us. They were very talented drummers, especially given that all their instruments were made of trash! Our hosts also taught us Moroccan songs and dances. It was wonderful to see how people spend their time when they don't have internet, movie theaters, etc.

Drumming on empty water bottles and other plastic jugs.

Grandpa came out and invited us to dance.

 Grandpa (in the last picture) was a highlight of the day, as he asked all the women how old we were and then told all the unmarried ladies that they were getting old and needed to start looking harder. He promised a cow and a room to anyone that married someone from the village. Too bad I found Jason, it was hard to pass up such a good deal!

After all the dancing, we dragged our mats up to the roof. It was such a beautiful night with so many stars that we couldn't resist the opportunity to sleep outside. Berber homes have flat roofs that often double as decks, so it worked out perfectly and we eventually fell asleep to the (sweet?) sounds of some upset donkeys.