Azrou Blues

You win some and you lose some, and Azrou was definitely a loss. We went to hike in the great cedar forest and hopefully spot some Barbary apes. We ended up getting scammed by yet another fake guide (we were set up by the hotel owner where we were staying, the guy basically cornered us on our way out and kept insisting that the guide would help us), hiked in the hills around town during the hottest part of the day and basically ended up paying the guide to leave us alone. We did get to see a troupe of Barbary apes, but they seemed to hang around a specific area because the "guides" were constantly feeding them. If I were an ape, I'd probably hang out near the free food supply as well. The town itself was also a bit disappointing. We figured getting off the tourist trail would be a good thing, but the town was neither attractive nor interesting. Oh well. On to the Sahara!

We rode three buses and one grand taxi to end up in Merzouga early this morning. We paid less than ten dollars to sleep in a pretty gnarly room for a few hours and now we are attempting to make contact with our desert guide...without success. There is no running water in the town currently, so no shower. After fifteen hours in transit, you can imagine how good we smell. The flies (which are plentiful here) seem to think we smell delicious, if that is any indication. So maybe we find another guide with camels, maybe not. We shall see.

We did get to see the sunrise in Rissani this morning over palm trees and pink-hued clay buildings. That was pretty great. Hopefully this is the low point of the trip and now things turn around! I'm off to track down some camels.

Holler (le steenk)