For our second and final day at Dar Ahlam, we scheduled … nothing. In many ways, it was a repeat of the first day. We found our way down (and up) narrow stairs and through hallways to the living room area, where a member of the staff appeared to escort us to our breakfast table. As we had experienced yesterday, the tables are scattered all around the grounds, so we never sat the same place twice.

Once we finished breakfast, the manager came over and was talking about our plans for the day (none), when he suggested we have a guide drive us around Skoura, the town here. Sally had not left the hotel since we arrived, so we decided it would be a nice thing to do. After checking the manager came back and said the guide would be here by noon and would take us our for an hour or whatever we liked. As it turns out, the same guide who escorted me on my walk yesterday drove from his home about an hour away with a driver and arrived right on time.

We had a nice drive around and made a few stops. Skoura, a community of about 60,000, is slowly dying. The good news is that Morocco is very aggressive about children’s education, and as the children graduate they move to the cities to pursue careers other than the farming and craftwork that was traditionally done here. Also, there’s been a drought across sub-Saharan Africa for five years now, and the Sahara desert is slowly moving northward, making agriculture more difficult. So there are a fair number of homes that are abandoned, including one very large multifamily structure that only has a few families left. –

When we got back to the hotel, lunch was waiting at yet another different location, this time in the middle of the farming area the hotel maintains for fruits and vegetables.

The hotel has a tiny gift shop, which unsurprisingly is unstaffed. You simply walk in and choose what you like, and they trust you to let them know so you can pay for it when you check out. We did this, and Sally picked out something she liked.

The rest of the afternoon was spent lounging near the pool area. The pool is nice enough, but they only have a few lounges, and the remaining guests (it’s Sunday afternoon and most people had checked out) were scattered about, making finding a suitable location to sit in the shade a bit difficult. But we eventually managed and enjoyed sitting there.

Back in the room we spent some time packing. We have a 10:15 flight tomorrow morning to get back to Casablanca for our onward flights to New York via London on Tuesday, so we need to leave the hotel by 7:45. Which means getting up by 6:00. Ugh.