16 November: Marrakech to Imlil

Today we had a 2 hour bus ride from Marrakech to Imlil. Once at Imlil, we stored our main luggage and took only our day-packs (with as much clothing as we could carry) on a 45 minute hike up into the Atlas Mountains. I'll be the first to say I was thankful that there were mules to carry our day-packs! Hell, I even contsidered hiring one to carry me but decided I would rather give it a bash - it's been long enough since that dreadful day in Sintra, surely!

The mountains are quite beautiful and there is quite a bit of snow on them which makes for a lovely view. The "hike" was quite nice too. We wandered up paths thru loads of walnut trees, which were all raining orange & yellow leaves down onto us. Beautiful.

We are staying in Gite D'Etape in a little vilage called Armed (said like Ahmed, I think), a small Berber town. We had a lovely lunch and a nice afternoon nap (must be the altitude) and a decent dinner. I will say that once the sun went, it was absolutely freezing here and we have been bundled up in blankets (and layered clothing) all evening. There was a fire going but sadly it didn't heat us up as well as we were hoping! We played some fun card games (similar to bridge) to pass the evening and now it's off to bed early, just to keep warm!