Hi Guys,
There are several themes of this trip that we would like to bring to
the forefront before we get started. 1. we love trains. 2. eric
walks at about an 8.5 and I am about at a 5, so I pretty much jog
everywhere like a ninny. 3. when in doubt, put a donk on it (we will
explain later). 4. missed trains are an opportunity for clean sheets.
5. resist all temptation to bum-rush doors when you are laden like a
camel (jmel) with a backpack heavier than you, a small backpack on the
front (though helpful as a bumper), and a duffle on the side,
especially if your backpack has a number of pendent, heavy, and
ungainly items (water bottles, shoes, smelly socks…). You'll probably
trip on the uneven, tiled, and wet landing, and nearly have to patron
the man in the square selling teeth, because you'll have knocked yours
out. Dr. Styrt would have been very unhappy. 6. climb things, but if
it's a sand dune, hold a touareg man's hand. 7. if a young, loose,
western woman ends up in a kitchen with a bevy of touareg men, don't
assume that she wants to be there, or that she's able to leave when
she wants. She'll give you grief for it later. 8. Muslims don't
drink alcohol (at least not in front of other muslims), but their tea
is filled with enough sugar to get you drunk. 9. give snake charmers
and monkey owners a wide berth when walking through squares, because
you never know when one of their keep might be flung in your direction. 10. eat
jamon. 11. you don't need a reason to drink, but free tapas is a good
one. 12. tailless monkeys love pasta, and have soft hands. The cable
car operators that feed them have large nose growths. 13. don't EVER
order a tuna burger from a snack stand, unless you are Russian and
"its for someone else." Harty says these are too many themes, and
they're not really themes, so here is some elaboration, but the rest
can be left to your imagination, or maybe we'll satisfy your remaining
curiosities at a later date.

1. We trained basically the entire length of Morocco, only to get on
a ferry and two buses, for a total of, I don't know, about a million
hours on the road. Finally ending in Gbralt via walking across the
main runway in the shadow of "the ROCK", which was dramatically up-lit
at night. Directly related to theme 4. It became necessary to train
all day when we went to the Mkesh train station only to find out that
the last train left 15min prior to our arrival. Our grand
Gibraltarian arrival (10:30 at night into an abandoned town) is
related to the tuna burger fiasco, theme 13, and the disgruntled
Russian. In case you are curious, a tuna burger of Gbralt is a burger
with a can of tuna upended atop the patty, including oil and tuna
juices. We couldn't help but laugh---and we learned another valuable
lesson, don't laugh at a Russian or his food.

3. Put a donk on it; handy in more ways than you would think! The
Berber people use donks to transport their food/supplies/wares great
distances. The surprising det is that the donks are unaccompanied,
giving them the freedom and the opportunity to peddle the goods
elsewhere for a larger profit margin. Silly old donks, those saggy
old baggies (we met a crazed brit who favored all of these "desert"
expressions, ie "saggy old baggy", and have adopted them into our common
parlance).

6. if there is a dune to climb, a car to climb on top of, anything
really at a higher elevation----CLIMB it, the view is better and the
journey will be worth the hassle.

7. As a loose western woman, I feel it is necessary to interject my
own voice in the retelling, seeing as how I had limited agency in the
actual event. The camp was very clearly rigged with trip wires that
would alert men from all corners of the camp whenever I walked out of
the tent/hut alone. Thring! A bell would go off, and they'd come
running, would zharah (my Arabic name, meaning flower, enormously
popular) like to look at the stars, make some tea---you name it,
anything to get you alone. As an aspiring journalist it was easy to
agree to long talks with nomadic Toureg people, they just happened to
be men about my age with other ideas. Oh well what can you expect from
a loose western woman?

8. They call their green/mint tea "Tuareg whiskey," and they drink it
as if it were whiskey. After seeing the iceberg-size chunks of sugar
go into those tiny teapots, we were understandably sugar-rushed when
forced to drink 12 cups in one day. So, it turns out they don't need
real whiskey to get crazy. The British version of the hokie-pokie is
called the oakie-kokie, and somehow, us, 2 brits, and about 6 touareg
men ended up doing the pumped up British version around a desert
campfire. It was probably the tea. It seemed more like a nature ritual
than a nursery song…or maybe just desert magic. In other tea news, we
drank some at a 100 year old man's home, with his granddaughter
sitting in the corner, in the bowels of the ancient Kasbah, a
labyrinth of houses and apartments and mosques and stores so dense
that light barely filtered in through tiny light wells above. Then
Sarah got henna, and I sat and chatted with our guide's "big mom" and
aunts and tried to ignore the aljazeera propaganda playing on tv. They
were lovely.

Enough for now. In a few hours we catch the bus to my dinky little
town, as always with our themes and lessons in mind. It will be nice
to have 3 days in the same place, which we haven't had since last year
(in Madrid), then we soldier on, to Sevilla and beyond.

Love love love

Sarah and Eric