snow storm and palms

Yesterday Mr. Brahim said we could have breakfast at 6 and indeed, we had a delicious meal with freshly crepe-like bred, the best we had so far. We went off and then suddenly it was raining and as we went up and up, we were driving under heavy snowfall! Wow! So cool. Luckily we had a lot of time and we could sneak our way up and down the pass without any incident. Hisham kept informing his friend about the conditions, he had clients to bring to the desert. Under heavy snow they close the pass and that would mean a drive all up to the coast to Agadir to get to where we were, a plus of 500-600km. So no wonder there is heavy construction going on, that road is essentiell to connect to south-east to Marrakesh. We crossed him when the pass was still open do he was really happy. A couple of minutes later there were big rocks on the street, probably just fallen down. Hisham stopped and he and Christoph with another driver went out to get them off the street, being located just after a turn that could have ended badly for a driver. We then stopped at a cooperative, those are financially supported by the state that (mostly) women can sell their crafts. We (had to) visited one yesterday who sold carpets. We are just not interested in carpets so it was a bit of an awkward visit, but not now: This cooperative sold Argan Oil. It is a tree endemic to Morocco and it has fruits that the goats like. That’s why they climb up those trees to est them. The fruit is them dried, peeled, then there is a core and after crashing the core there is the little flat thing where they press the oil out. Out of 90kg of fruits come 8-9kg of that flat things to get 1l of Argan Oil. It is then (that’s what they told us) milled by hand and a brown paste comes out of it. By putting a bit of water in the leftover gets solid amd they are formed as kind of disk (they reminded mit of big brown erythrocytes) and it seperates from the oil. The leftover fruit is given to the animals, the shell is used for heat and the brown big erythrocytes to ‘make to cows fat’. Haha. We had a nice coffee, shopped big time and then left in direction of the airport. We were good in time so we stopped at a local food place and had a delicious final moroccan dish. It was time to say good bye to Hisham. I am now sitting in the plane, we had a stunning sunset over the mediterranean with site in the French coast, an incredible sight on the alps including Mont Blanc and soon we will be landing and be picked up by Christophs mum.Read more