Funny thing happened on the way to the desert. We ran into a couple from Miami doing a similar trip to ours. Quit the jobs, sold the condo and ran for the hills. We were stuck in the desert and they had a car, so what the heck. We can put up with Americans for a free ride, right? First mistake: buses have A/C, cars don’t.

We traveled together for about a week, passing through the eastern desert to Zagora, into Marrakech and hiking the Atlas. Must have been tough for Mary and Mac as boys will be boys and Scott and I did our best to act like teen-agers for a week. Nobody ended up in jail, but I got run up another palm tree.

By the way, that tree is higher than it looks and those frawn stubs are sharp. This climb was actually less fun than scurrying up the coco palms in the Dominican Republic.