Atlas Mountains, Barbary Apes and the Sahara

Today was mostly a travel day with stops for interesting things along the way.  We left Fes after breakfast and traveled south into the Atlas Mountains.  Up and up we went, getting colder and colder until we reached an alpine valley in the Middle Atlas Mountains.  The woods have stands of cedar, cypress and pine, and the air is crystal clear.  We took a hike (that is, Leah and our guide Jalil and I took a hike—Joyce has some back spasms after yesterday and sat this one out).  Here’s Leah with Jalil:

These high woods are populated with Barbary Apes which look like relatives of baboons, and ambulate on all fours as baboons do:

The snowfields are very pretty:

The nomadic and seminomadic Berbers graze their sheep here all year long:

The nearby villages have giant stork populations, and the nests and the storks are on every house:

We stopped at a fairly simple place for lunch, and the fresh trout was spectacular!  Leah had skewered turkey; she doesn’t like fish:

After lunch we drove over a pass in the High Atlas and descended to the floor of the Sahara.  Just the Sahara, not the Sahara Desert, as we found out Sahara means desert in Arabic.  So Sahara Desert is redundant.  This part of it looks very much like the bleak, arid flat West Texas landscape:

We also found out that the word oasis, at least here, applies to any watery place in the desert.  Here’s a 72-mile long linear oasis along a river:

Finally, at places along the road there are, of course, vendors, whose starting prices for things approximate the prices at Tiffany’s.  The art of haggling is not one we Americans have well developed:

Tomorrow sand dunes and camels!