Driving through the Mountains

Here's the latest from Jen and Eric's adventure in Morocco:

"Today Jenn and I rented a car in Marrakech and headed for
the Sahara desert. We wondered why we had rented a car 
and were a bit jealous when we started passing trucks 
and buses filled with goats and chickens while the people 
got to ride on the roof.  I like riding on mobile barns too. We 
didn't make it to the desert today. You see there were a few 
mountains in between. We spent the day climbing and 
diving through the mountain passes of the high atlas 
mountains. It was the most enchanting thing we have ever 
seen.
 
We would occasionally stop and look over the valleys and 
vistas and see and hear the shepherds and animals on 
the terraces. We could see many berber villages raised 
out of the mountains. Camouflaged because the huts were 
made of sand and rock. We stopped somewhere and had 
a berber woman make us some lunch. We are certain none
of the ingredients ever touched a grocery store. I mentioned 
the berber villages weren't colorful but everything else was. 
Their clothes their faces and jewelry. They have the warmest 
smiles.  The sky and the orchards and the crystals for sale 
at the side of the road.  I shook a young girls hand. She was 
about 12 and her sister 4. Her hand was like rough sandpaper 
and I could see her face was weathered the same. Must be 
from the wind and sun. Around and on top of every mountain 
there were men gathering sticks or shepherding and women 
drying clothes on stone fences or washing them in the stream. 
I can't tell you how many times a donkey or goat almost startled 
me off a cliff. 
 
Atop the snowy peaked mountains there was no vegetation and 
many steep turns and climbs. On some of the switchback turns 
with little or no guardrails Jenn was getting too anxious. We had 
to take a break. So I stopped and got out for a breather myself 
and was approached by some berber merchants with whom I 
haggled for some jewelry. It was very windy and too cold to 
stand out there without my berber wool sweater or hands in pockets. 
 
We picked up a hitchhiker who's car broke down and brought him 
to ouarzazate  . Here he invited us into his cousin's house for tea 
and we went. We soon found out that anyone who wants to try and 
sell you something is everyone's cousin. That's right. The hitchhiker 
turned out to be a traveling sales agent claiming commissions on 
every service ,meal, and hotel we might need. But we were tough 
and after we guided him to where we wanted to stay he went off 
probably to find another tourist
 
Then we had a wonderful tagine and coucous dinner with dates 
and pickled lemons etc. 
 
Where we are now is in between mountain and desert. Kind of 
like a Utah or Nevada Navaho scene.
 
Tomorrow night we sleep with our camel in a tent in the Sahara. 
The dunes in this part get to 300 meters high. We will probably 
stretch that to 2 nights and press on on camel to the Algerian 
border where the black volcanic sands are. The tribes there
live in stone huts too and I'm told they will invite us in for the night. 
 
This trip so far has been thrilling. 
 
On the way back we might try to bring a live chicken from the 
market and see if we can stop at a berber village and trade for 
a dinner and some interesting conversation."

--Eric

My response will suggest to Eric that he try a similar tactic when
he's traveling and invite his sales leads to his cousin's house.