5:30am came too soon, and we stumbled out of our tents bleary eyed and poorly rested. Clare and Barry loaded up with some coffee, and then we followed a guide out into the Sahara. It was cold and windy, with the wind picking up the fine sand and throwing it brutally in your face.

The guide kept a quick pace on the flat land, but slowed when we got to the steep slope of the big dune. As we climbed higher, the wind picked up, with each ridge crested greeted by a harsh blast of sand.

We reached the summit, about 400 feet above the land below, where we were pummeled by 80-90 mile an hour winds. I filled a zip-lock bag with some sand as a memento for Jiji. The sky was completely overcast, so we couldn't tell if the sun had risen yet. I checked with my GPS, and discovered that it had risen 15 minutes prior, at a quarter after six, so we headed back down.

As we approached a ridge overlooking a steep bowl, the guide grabbed Clare and my hands and then took off running straight down the face of the bowl. We half ran, half skiied down the sand, covering 100 feet of elevation in maybe 50 feet of distance, with the three of us laughing like madmen.

We got back to camp, tried to clean the sand out of our gear, and had a light breakfast. I think I'll have to send my camera in for a thorough cleaning, as sand got in under some of the controls, even with the rubber case on it. We packed our bags again, and got out of dodge; with the extra distance to the Sahara, we had a long day of driving ahead of us.

As we left the Sahara, it started raining again, really heavy this time. Clare and Barry slept in the backseat as we hurdled through the driving rain back to Marrakech.

The rain persisted through the ante-Atlas valley, as we passed through Agdz, the town that could only afford one vowel, which was having a big market day.

I pulled a couple of gigs of songs off my iPod; being unable to pick specific songs, Ibrahim was inflicted with a random selection of my tastes. He liked the more folky music, which bears a close resemblance to the native Berber music, and had no love for the more produced tracks such as Chemical Brothers and Ministry.

We stopped for lunch outside of Ourzazate at the hotel Les Jardins, where we had a night, light, meal with a fresh vegetable salad, macaroni salad, roast veggies and chicken brochettes. For dessert, there were crepes, sweetened with thin honey. There was even an open access point that stayed alive long enough for me to check email and let Barry read a message from his girlfriend. Once again we noticed a large number of flies; it must be something endemic to Ourzazate.

We stopped in the city so that Clare could get some more money from the ATM. After, Barry and Clare said the wanted to go into a shop; Ibrahim went to look for some mint tea for Clare, leaving me in the car. After a long while, Ibrahim returned with the tea, but Clare and Barry hadn't returned yet.

We went to see what was up, and found them in the back of the shop, looking at jewelry. I saw a nice silver bracelet with a green cat's eye, and bought it after talking the price down 10%.

We loaded up and left town, stopping at a gas station to fill up. While Ibrahim pumped, I ran inside and bought some detailed maps of Morocco for the three of us to keep as souvenirs.

As we headed down the foothills into the valley, we were talking about how we were tired of eating tagines and curries, so Ibrahim called ahead to the hotel and asked them to make spaghetti for us.

We got to the hotel and were greeted wit a wonderful meal: a vegetable soup, spaghetti with a nice marinara sauce, and a couple of different slices of tarts.

The owner of the hotel was in town from Canada, so we sat and spoke with him for a bit, while the three of us finished a mostly empty bottle of gin that a prior guest had left behind.

We adjourned to our room to take welcome hot showers and, with the alarm clock set for 3am, set to sleep.