The Adventures of Lorie and Brian Groth

Some of you may recognize the skis on the middle of this chair my brother built. The blue Atomics used to be on the outside of our houseboat in Fremont.

I can now say I’ve ridden a camel into the Sahara desert, climbed up a sand dune and looked out across the dunes under bright sunshine and under bright moonlight. I have a short video of riding the camels. I can also say I’ve spent a sleepless night in a nomadic tent as I listened to our camels lightly snore. No video of that.

Technically, I rode in on a dromedary, which is a camel with one hump instead two. They crap a lot when walking. None of us slept in the desert that night, because our nomadic tent flapped loudly in the strong desert winds. All night. At least none of us got spit on by our camels and drumming at night with our Berber friends and guides while gathered around a camp fire was fun. The video of that is much more about the audio.

… To back up, this was a road trip through Morocco with friends Kris, Donna, Char, LuAnn, Laura, plus Lorie and I. We were let by our guide Abdellah and our driver Abdul Karim.

We saw a variety of Moroccan life, learned about the Berber people, and stayed in their guest houses and hotels. That includes the local cats and dogs that hang around the hotels too. We also learned a bit of Moroccan history and a few Arabic words along the way. Thankfully, French is spoken by most people and English worked much of the time too. One very interesting place we saw was Ksar Ait Ben Haddou, which is a UNESCO World Heritage site and where many movies have been filmed.  

We drove through the mid and the high Atlas Mountains, but thankfully never hit any snow since we weren’t prepared for that. We saw mountain towns and desert towns, all built in either cinder blocks or mud with bamboo roofs. We visited a "Berber pharmacy" (think herbalist or a natural pharmacy, not chemical) and visited a shop with rooms full of Arab, Berber and Jewish artifacts from the region. The main guy there is one of the best salesman I’ve ever met. Our friends bought carpets from him, but he and I couldn’t agree on a price.

After many days of driving, Lorie and I opted to drop out of our tour two days early and stayed at a nice riad in Marrakech instead of heading to the beach. It was a smart move, since it was quite, relaxing, they served us great meals, and we were close enough to walk to the markets and retreat back to the road for a break.

In Marrakech, we saw snake chargers, endangered monkeys on leashes, streets filled with cars, scooters, donkeys pulling carts and horses pulling carriages with tourists. The souks are packed with everything for sale, a bit like a maze, and fascinating.

Check out all the photos, and pay attention to the file name to get a bit of context.

		Morocco VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

The Medina is the old part of the city and is a maze of alleys with ships, people, scooters, cars and horse & buggies.

In Marrakech, we found a cafe that also offers cooking classes. While sitting down for a snack and an Orangina, we started talking to the two women next to us. They had just finished up their cooking class as part of their trip; both American with one currently living in London. Since they had extra cookies, they offered us some as they said “happy Thanksgiving”.

It was a nice gesture from like-minded travelers.

We drove over the High Atlas Mountains today, and at 2,260 meters, it’s the highest pass in the country (I think). See http://www.lonelyplanet.com/morocco/to-tizi-n-tichka

I don’t remember the name of the town, but the view was fantastic.

This is the view from the roof top deck at our hotel in a valley near the foot hills High Atlas Mountains.

We actually rode dromedary, which is the single-hump camel. This is our caravan of eight waiting to take us out of the desert, which was just after sunrise.

The camels were parked out back.

It’s the area near Merzouga on the map.