Next morning dawned bright and a little chilly. Chillier for the Italians than for us, as they had drawn the short straw and ended up with the room with the non-closing window. So they came down coughing and spluttering, Vanessa more so as she seemed to be caught in the depths of the 'grippe'. Fortunately the coughing and spluttering was limited to our Italian friends and didn't extend to our car, though she did seem a little reluctant to get going.

We drove around in circles for awhile thanks to the now legendary navigational skills of the Beni Mellalians, but eventually we managed to find fuel for both the car (in the form of petrol and air) and us (in the form of bread, cheese and oranges). Vanessa was quite excited at the supermarket when we found the little soft cheese triangles known as La Vache Qui Rie. This excitement was to wane considerably over the next few weeks as the cows laughs grew more and more mocking...

But for now, we all set off cheerfully for our trip across the Atlas Mountains to the little town of Er Rachidia. We were cheered even further by the sun, which had finally popped it's head out from the clouds and looked as though it was there to stay.

Our first stop was just outside Beni Mellal, at a lagoon that the guide book had recommended, nestled a pretty valley. This stop turned out to be short lived, as we discovered that the lagoon was attached to a hydro-electric plant and the Moroccan government officials, mistaking us for some kind of international spies, didn't take kindly to us stopping to take photos. So we headed up to a lookout point where we could take all the photos we wanted (and stop for an Australian / Italian pee pee).

Up we climbed into the increasingly chilly Altiplano. We started noticing some white stuff on the ground which Kato assured Nato was salt, and nothing to be concerned about. Only a breakdown could cause us any trouble. A breakdown or.... a flat tire, which Nato noticed after our second photo stop. By now the salt was thick on the ground and it was decidedly chilly outside. Nonetheless, our brave Italian Vito set to work changing the tire while we did our best to help by supervising proceedings, in the best Australian Road Gang tradition. We must have done some good supervising as we were off again without too much trouble.

We stopped in the next town we could find to get the tyre looked at. This town was so small that I don't think it had a name, but they fixed our tire (using all sorts of modern technology, such as submerging the tire in water to find the leak) and in return we provided the day's amusement for the locals, who found us endlessly fascinating and wandered past several times each to check us out. We got the feeling that this was not on the usual gringo trail.

Tire repaired, spare off and so were we. We carried on through the Altiplano where the snow got thicker on the trees and the trees gradually became sparser on the ground. We were headed for the largish town of Er Rachidia on the outskirts of the desert. Before we got there, however, we decided to stop for an Italian coffee (it had been at least 3 hours since Vito's last nescafe). No sooner had we reached town when a hawker caught us at the round about and started ushering us into town. Unfortunately traffic was slow enough to allow him to run along side the window and even give us a bit of help getting into our parking space. So our quiet coffee (at a dude ranch of course) was not quite as quiet as we had hoped, but then there wasn't really much alone time to be had in Morocco we were discovering. Still, we managed to escape without buying anything (except a coffee for the hawker - we considered this cheap) and we were on the road again.

We finally arrived in Er Rachidia around dusk, and found another hawker on the roundabout on the way into town. Clearly some Moroccan town planner has bowed to the pressure of hawkers by positioning these roundabouts on the entrance to every big town. Fortunately there was also a policewoman, but rather unsurprisingly she was even less helpful than the hawker, and seemed unsure of even of her directions, telling us to go 'a gauche' which apparently in Moroccan French means both left and right, depending on which way you happen to be pointing.

But we found the hotel (this time with closed windows), around which there seemed to be a hive of activity. This had all but dissipated by the time we got back from dinner (more tagine and cous cous) at about 9.30m, but we did managed to find a patisserie and Vanessa and Kato even braved a dude ranch for some after dinner nescafe.

So a successful day, braving both sun and snow, Moroccan police (friendly and unfriendly) and the usual assortment of hawkers..