Monkey Business (Again)

We're off again. Again, more pictures of the palm trees. Our final destination is Fez. This was our longest riding day. Still not too far though, only 275 miles. We left the Saharan desert and climbed again into the High Atlas and then later the Middle Atlas Mountains.

Along the way we went through a cedar forest.


All of the ornate woodwork we saw in the mosque in Casablanca was cedar wood from these mountains. These trees were huge.

We got behind this truck right before our lunch stop. The road was pretty bumpy and at one point, I don't exaggerate, the right two wheels were not on the ground. I was worried it was going to fall over.

Jens said he knew of a good little roadside stand for lunch. It was good food with a good atmosphere. Along the way, the other lady on the trip and I started to rate the bathrooms. This restaurant's bathroom was rated a "one flusher". The good bathrooms were given "five flushes".

That sheep was literally our lunch...yummy.

We knew that not far from our lunch stop we may have an opportunity to see some wild monkeys. Some Berber monkeys still live in the area. Just in case, we took some bread from the restaurant.

We were in luck. The monkeys were right near the road. Mike's love affair with the monkeys would continue. These monkeys were pretty used to people and they'd take the bread right out of your hands. I had the most fun just watching how much Mike liked feeding the monkeys. He had a soft spot for the small monkeys because the bigger monkeys would try and run them off. We also got to see a very small baby monkey...too adorable. This was a lot of fun.





Sadly, we did eventually run out of bread. So we headed on to Fez. Below is one of the gates we rode through while entering the city.

That's Fez in the background. I don't know if you can make it out, but there is a lot of black smoke in the background. That is from the pottery kilns that are fired up every afternoon. We stayed in a hotel that over looked the city. The restaurant had a retractable roof. That was pretty neat!!