Following an early breakfast at our hotel, we head to Midelt, through the Saiss Plain and Middle Atlas Mountains. After an aborted attempt to visit the University Al Akhouine, we continued on to the ski resort town of Ifrane, which was modeled after those in Switzerland. We stop at a café and Martha manages to get a great souvenir, a coke bottle sporting Arabic script! As we drive through the countryside, we see numerous herd animals (mostly sheep), cedar trees, grapes, and the occasional black nomadic tent dotting the landscape. We stop for lunch in Midelt, a small mining town, where the gift shop sells a variety of fossils and minerals. Marian took advantage of this stop to get a shoeshine. We drive by a Saturday souk in Nzala and decide to look around. The goods are displayed along the ground, every few feet. There are loads of fresh vegetables and fruits, some handicrafts and woven items, bundles of wool, olive oil and things wrapped in plastic, which I could not identify. There were also donkeys and people everywhere! We next stop at a place overlooking the Ziz River Valley. We can see date palms growing thickly, for miles, on both sides of the river. Farther on, our driver stops the bus and we get out to take our first glimpse of the Sahara desert! We are barely on the edge of the sand dunes, but the demarcation line is very distinct. You can stand with one foot in the shifting sands of the desert and one foot on solid rocky ground. Larbi demonstrates the shifting of sand that creates the Erg Chebbi dunes. Phil manages to keep a small sample, that I jokingly called his “desert-in-a-bottle” souvenir! We arrive in Erfoud in the early evening and checked into the rather primitive Hotel Salam.