Another day dedicated almost entirely to work. Spent the day at the work space but did go out to dinner in the evening with some fellow remotes. We went to this Mexican place, La Bodega. It was alright but it was crazy expensive for Mexican food. Although, that could be because when you order “a burrito” there it’s actually two burritos. Food was ok, not exactly “authentic” though. But what do you expect? It’s Morocco!
Category: Rabat
Day 153 | October 26
Still paying for my hubris in taking an entire weekend off of work I literally did nothing today. Went to the work space, sat down, started working. Went home twelve hours later and crashed. Thank God for catered lunches!
Day 152 | October 25
Another day completely packed with work. I never realized how important working over the weekend is to keeping up with my life. Three days without a computer and I’m totally swamped now! Luckily after a solid 12 hours of just sitting on the computer not moving I was able to cap it off with a little viewing party and the season premier of the Walking Dead back at my place. Ok! All caught up on the daily entries! That was really starting to hang over my head. I’ll clean them up later…
Day 151 | October 24
Back to the normal slog of work in Rabat today. I don’t think I did a single thing other than go in to 7Ay, put my head down and start working all day. Luckily, I had a long wait for a car in the evening so I managed to read Hope and Other Foolish Pursuits almost in it’s entirety over the course of waiting for a car and then the ride home. Sadly… book club ended up being postponed anyway.
Day 150 | October 23
Another early start to the day and more driving. Made all the better because of a stop to take ATVs up to Ait-Ben-Haddou which you may remember from… every movie ever. After that it was a very long haul all the way back to Rabat to crash after limited sleep, long car rides and dehydration that I’m still recovering from.
Day 149 | October 22
Very nearly slept through the sunrise this morning. After snapping awake and hoofing it up the dunes I managed to make it just in time. We had a light breakfast and tried our hand at sand boarding which was challenging considering the straps on the board I chose were broken. The Sahara doesn’t mess around, though, and it got hot very quickly. We shipped out shortly after for the long trek over to the Dades Gorge and our next stop at Auberge Chez Piere which was a great hotel at the top of the gorge where we had an excellent dinner and then sat around the pool for the rest of the evening.
Day 148 | October 21
Departed Rabat promptly at 6am to begin the long drive out to Merzouga and the jumping off point to the open Sahara. We headed south through the Rif Mountains and stopped at a little gas station for a surprisingly good breakfast before we actually hit the mountains. I knew they existed but I was surprised to see monkeys in the mountains and we stopped to get some pictures of them. They are surprisingly unafraid of humans and some walked right up to us. More driving and we stopped at an Oasis that I can’t recall the name of for an excellent lunch. More driving and then we finally hit the desert. From here we had to switch to a 4×4 and we headed out over the bedrock that ultimately leads to the dunes. Once we hit the dunes we switched to camels to cross the sand to our camp. Along the way we stopped to watch the sunset. Our camp was gorgeous, our tents basically had full bedrooms and we even had running water. They made a great dinner for us and lit up a bunch of torches on the side of a sand dune in the shape of a heart. It was too dark to get pictures but the coolest part was easily sitting out away from camp in the silence and starlight.
Day 147 | October 20
Today was pretty uneventful. I just went over to 7AY and crammed as much work in as possible because tomorrow was an early departure for a very long trek around Morocco. I didn’t leave the office until let and then had to gather my things for our departure the next day.
Day 146 | October 19
Sadly our little reprieve in Tangier was coming to an end today so it was off to the train station to return to Rabat. We were early for our train soooo… there ended up being another trip to the Hilton breakfast buffet before we left. After that it was just the long train ride back to Rabat and then home to get set up for the next adventure.
Day 145 | October 18
Today had to be a productive day as well so we went back to avail ourselves of the Hilton’s internet and this time we even made it in time for breakfast. Having not had a decent breakfast since Lisbon this turned into the greatest feast of all time. After that it was just work for most of the day before fulfilling another one of our major shortcomings from over the weekend which was actually having dinner at El Morocco Club. I emailed them about getting a reservation that evening so we could actually do it right and was promptly turned down… Luckily they said we could sit in the lounge and still order off of the dinner menu which was more interesting to me anyway so we went with that.