Sick (and tired) in the desert (10.4.07)

It is Thursday, October 4, and the beginning of the final week. The tour is officially over on October 11 and I have to admit that it will be none too soon. This is not to imply that I dislike Morocco or haven't been impressed by its rich history and unbelievable visual smorgasbord. Rather, last night and today my body succombed to the unrelenting pace of the tour. Essouira on 9.25.07 was the last time that we had any free time for independent exploration and shopping, with the exception of what one can fit in before 9:00 am and after 10:00 pm. The rest of the time is taken up with organized tours, lectures, excursions, meals, and travel, and I can honestly say that this is not a vacation tour for anyone who has to go back to work immediately after the tour ends. Rather, it is custom-designed for the active retiree who has the luxury to come home, sleep late, lick travel wounds, and still have plenty of free time to download, edit, and print the 800 photographs that they took during the trip. As for me, I am already done in! I can't keep up with the 70 year-olds!
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While the rest of the group started their day with a 45-min hike to a nomad encampment in the middle of the desert and later will go to a 19th century French jail and then fossil collecting at a local site, I am alone at base camp with a sore throat, achy body, and filled-to-the-brim sinuses. In the meantime, I am trying to fent off the ever-present black flies that are making a bee-line for the corners of the eyes and mouth. I picked up a head cold from my mother over the last two days and decided that would be better to relax in the base camp than trying to push it on the tour and get other people sick in the process. I do have to take comfort in the fact that I don't have the intestinal bug that my mother came down with yesterday. After having to stop at least three times in the desert surrounded on three sides by local touts hawking fossils, she ended up so weak by the end of the afternoon and evening that I started her on my Cipro. By today, she was back up, ready and rarin´to go!

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Though we are going to be here for a rare two nights in a row, we haven't even had the luxury to unpack! We arrived last night during a rather unpleasant (but mild) sandstorm. In case another one arises during the day we have to keep our bags zipped up and ready to go if Aziz feels we need to move to a hotel at the last minute. I am patiently waiting for the sun to set again since the heat inside the tents is literally 96 F. Those of you who know me may wonder what happened to the woman who occasionally turns on the heat in her car in the middle of a hot North Carolina afternoon. NO ICE is what happened to me! I am sure that my teeth are much happier with me, but I can´t imagine that it is going to be another month and a half before I can again savor the indescribably succulent soft ice pellets spat our by the Hoshizaki ice machine in the break room of Womble Carlyle.

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The group arrived from their morning excursion as I was lying on the filthy floor of the zipped up tight tent with a wet rag over my face to keep cool. I grudgingly sat in on lunch and then stayed in the dining tent for our two hours of ¨free¨time. I attempted a 30-minute walk among the sand dunes, though I felt like no-one had EVER felt as bad as I did with my cold. The dunes were actually very interesting. At the base of many of the dunes was dry lake bed with fossil rocks and even a few seashells. I gave up the walk after the second emergency ¨pit stop¨ behind a dune (alá Alla T. Campbell) and me and my aching body stumbled back to the dining tent for Aziz´s lecture on Islam.

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Based on cultural differences alone, I am now pretty sure that I am not interested in living for any significant period of time in a Muslim country, but the information was interesting nonetheless.

Evening brings a phenomenal explosion of stars and a very prominent Milky Way that cuts a cloudy streak across middle of the sky that I have never ever seen before.