It’s going to be tough to keep up to date on this trip. I have little incentive to waste time in an internet cafe when the life outside is so vibrant. I met an Australian couple at breakfast this morning who were heading to Marakesh, which is as far as I’ve got with my plans. They had tickets for the bus, so I decided on that route as well. The open countryside held my attention for a while, but while the endless plains rolled past, I thought I’d get in some planning. The big question is whether to settle in the mountains, the desert or by the sea. The desert is probably the most interesting and there are tours for about $60 per day. That was as far as I got before a glance out the window showed me a clay villa. I’d almost missed it with my head buried in the Lonely Planet. I quickly stashed it in my bag again.
The villas seem at first to be open roofed, but a closer look shows a few closed-in rooms along one or two of the walls. These would be where the families live, I guessed, while the open area is the store and barn. These structures appeared in isolation and in village clusters, sometimes at the base of hills, others amidst tilled fields and some next to archeological dig sites. The fields were almost always walled off by cactus hedges.