After our numerous visitors the night before, we somehow managed to get up early enough to have breakfast on our own, before more friends came to see us. This time it was two women who were very interested to watch us pack up and enjoyed dressing Friedel in their headscarves, in exchange for a chance to try on her sunglasses.
Our first few kilometers on the road were mostly downhill, a nice change from the previous few days. The scenery continued to be quite beautiful, going through a valley with palm trees and a dried up river bed, with mountains looming over us on both sides. We stopped after about an hour to filter some water from a well and were joined after a few minutes by two Germans, also doing a tour of Morocco, seeking out mountainous roads for a bit of winter training. It turns out they are part of a team back home that competes in 24-hour cycle races – we can’t even imagine! They definitely have our admiration.
The last stretch into Tiznit was fairly unremarkable, both in terms of scenery and the terrain. We also found the town rather uninteresting, but the hot weather has been sapping all our energy lately and we didn’t have the oomph to carry on so we reluctantly took our place in a campground that seems like a huge parking lot. It is expensive and ugly, but at least tomorrow we will carry on and for now we have a place in the shade. Some people stay here for weeks in their motorhomes and we find it hard to imagine why. There are so many nicer places in Morocco to take in the winter sun.