We woke up feeling half human. Clare was free of her vertigo, but we were all walking with queasy stomachs.

Ibrahim was scheduled to pick us up at 11am, so we packed our gear up, and got some light breakfast. Barry belayed Clare on the routes behind the hotel, so that she could experience the rock and say that she had climbed in Africa.

Ibrahim had heard of our ills, so he took his time on the way out, picking us up at noon.

The route out of Todra, which was dark when we passed through before, winds through lush valleys of cultivated plantations. Date palms, fig trees and olives predominate, planted haphazardly with small plots of crops in the undergrowth.

We stopped in Tinerhir; Ibrahim got a hole in his tire patched, while the three of us browsed a "supermarket", a small shop by American standards. I got some yogurt and Sprite, Barry managed to acquire some beer, "Especiale", a pilsner that came in short 8 ounce cans. Ibrahim swore Coke with evaporated milk was a great stomach remedy, so we tried it out; it wasn't as bad as it sounds, tasting like a spiced cream soda.

Heading east towards the Sahara, the land dried and the roads turned long and straight. We passed through several small villages, slowed in one town by hundreds of teenage children on bicycles, riding three abreast in the road, stretched out along several miles of the road.

We still hadn't recovered our appetites, so we didn't stop for lunch. Instead we stopped at a stone manufacturer in the town of Erfoud. One of the men gave us a tour, explaining the local geology. The Sahara was a sea 350 million years ago, and now the area is abundant with fossils: squid, trilobytes, and even an impressive jellyfish fossil.

As we approached the Sahara, the landscape turned surprisingly verdant. Apparently this was a pretty wet year, which was welcome after several years of drought.

Passing through Rissani, Ibrahim pointed out the red dunes of the Sahara off on the horizon. Shortly, he turned off the highway onto a dirt road, travelling for a few miles and stopping at a restaurant/shop with a train of camels in the back. We would be taking the camels to the camp, while Ibrahim would meet us there with our luggage.

As a mode of transport, the camel is quite ridiculous. Slow, ungainly and rude, these beasts' sole purpose would appear to be to bruise the bones in your rear as deeply as possible.

Actually, it wasn't that bad, although I'm glad we opted for the short ride. It is rather difficult to hold a camera steady while under way, however.

Our guide was fairly nice, although he did stop and hawk us some wares (Clare talked him down a third on a fish-shaped fossil soap dish). He knew which times and angles were good for pictures, and took some shots of us with the camels.

Once, as he was taking pictures, another camel caravan passed by; our dumb dromedaries fell in line and started following them, leaving our guide behind. He caught up with us, and our caravans walked the same path for a short while as our guide had a conversation in Italian with a lady in the other caravan.

As we arrived at the camp it was starting to get dark, with thick thunderclouds to the north and east lit up with huge bolts of lightning. We got to the tents just as it started raining huge, fat, drops of water.

The sleeping tents were low-slung, with woolen coverings. Since it had been dry in the area for quite a while, the heavy rain forced its way through until the wool could soak up enough to swell and form a water-tight barrier.

We had a nice dinner of soup (which resembled a strong chicken noodle), rice and cous cous. One of the men running the camp had gotten a scorpion sting on his hand out at an oasis a day or so earlier, so we gave him some benadryl to help with the swelling.

After dinner I wanted to take pictures of the lightning, which was directly overhead and quite impressive, but it was too wet and windy to take the camera out. As it was, the find red sand was blowing everywhere, coating all surfaces.

We wanted to hike up the dunes to see the sunrise the next morning, so Barry and I went to bed early. Sleep was a long time coming, and not very restful; all of the beds in Morocco are really hard, and these were no exception. This time, the pleasure extended to the pillows, which were rough facsimiles of sandbags. Fortunately, my digestion seems to have recovered, and I wasn't woken in the middle of the night with an urgent call to nature.

It's hard to believe that this was day 7 of the 10 day trip; in hindsight it feels more like the half-way mark, which makes sense given the two days lost to travel and health problems.

For a third world country, Morocco is pretty accommodating to westerners. Except for the tents in the Sahara, there were flush toilets, hot water and electricity everywhere we stayed. Even in the Sahara the pit toilets were western style, with real toilet seats.

Morocco is pretty tourist oriented, and my biggest gripe is with the process of tipping. It's like a theme park, where all of the prices for the rides are hidden, and you get glared at if you guess wrong. I had a hard time determining what were tipping situations, and found myself resenting the assumed expectation of reward for trivial tasks. Ah well, it's all part of the experience, I suppose.