After waking up at 6:00 AM, we relax in our sleeping bags. It is too cold to get up!!! Breakfast is served at 8:15 AM, so we get out of bed to get some warm tea and something like roti prata with jam and sugar. It is great. We then go take a look outside. Most of the clouds have cleared, other than some around the peaks. It is still quite cold, but begins to warm up as the sun peaks over the mountain tops. The amazing thing is the snow on some of the mountains around us. We judged that there was snow at an altitude where we had turned around the previous day. That means that we would have been camping at the refuge in snow with wet tents and sleeping gear - that would not have been good. It was very wise to turn around.
Mark turns up (he had yesterday gone ahead to move the truck from Imlil further down the valley as he was afraid that some of the road would wash away. Another wise decision - the road had gotten narrow in spots and at one of these spots, in order to get around a corner, the back end of the truck hit the cliff face, breaking one of the back upper windows and ripping the top hinge off the back locker). We re-think our plans and decide to leave today (rather than tomorrow) and to head off to the beach. After a relaxing morning, we pack up and walk down to Imlil at 11:00AM. This is a nice, slow walk down.
Upon arriving at Imlil, we go to a local house and have lunch on the roof. We then head off at 1:00 PM and load up into a van to head down the valley to the truck. The van is not too big, but we fit about 20 of us, plus the driver and all our bags and tents. The bags went on the roof, along with four of us (including Lars), with the balance inside. It was a tight fit. But it is quite a nice ride on the roof of the van - we have lots of fresh air and great views. Just before we reached the truck, we had to get off the roof (possible police check points) and stuff into the van - it was a tight fit.
We load up the truck, and head off to Marrakech. Upon arriving in Marrakech, we walk around for half-an-hour, pick up Jeff and Kelly and head off at 3:55 PM to Essaouira, a town on the Atlantic Ocean. We arrive at 7:20 PM and set up in a campsite on the edge of town. We cook a meal off the truck and we go to bed early.