Carla Schoepfle

Several months ago, Pete’s mom, Norma, started planning the trip to Morocco.  We ended up signing up for a tour with GAP Adventures on their “Highlights of Morocco” trip. 

The trip (from April 7 to 20) was pretty much non-stop.  We were in a new bed just about every night.  But we got to see a lot (by hitting Casablanca, Rabat, Meknes, Fes, Merzouga, Essaouira, and Marrakesh).   Luckily everyone was pretty nice, since it was a snug fit to put all 17 (including driver and guide) of us in the van. 

I think my favorite part of the trip was the Sahara desert.  Upon getting to the desert, it rained, which was kind of neat.  But my favorite sight was the stars we saw at night. I’d never seen the Milky Way galaxy before.  It took me a while to realize that this was the Milky Way galaxy and not a weird cloud (left over from the rain). 

Although I don’t think I ever need to ride a camel again.  They give a very bouncy ride.  One of the members of our group fell off the camel on the ride out to the desert.  He mentioned (but luckily didn’t show us) that he had a sizable bruise on his tail bone. 

My second favorite part of the tour was seeing the High Atlas Mountains.  It was definitely an amazing contrast from the night before in the desert.  We also finally had our most varied breakfast in the High Atlas Mountains (it included Honey). 

Before the trip started, Pete and I noticed that the plane flights went through London, UK and decided to stay 2 extra nights after the Morocco tour in London.  I’m really glad we did, because after the flight from Morocco, I don’t think I could have gotten on the plane back to the US. 

The food in Morocco was not as varied as I expected it to be.  Breakfast was bread, butter, apricot jelly, and delicious fresh squeezed orange juice.  Apparently some folks have second breakfast of a Berber omelet (but we didn’t have second breakfast on the tour).  Lunch and dinner were both tagines.  A tagine is name of the cooking dish, but it generally consists of lamb, beef, chicken, or coos coos with vegetables.  All meals came with mint tea and coffee breaks were always a welcome treat.  The most common coffee drink is called nosnos and consists of steamed milk with an espresso shot and sugar.  Most delicious.  But it’s nice to be home and having variety in food and my own pillow again.

I’ll add a link to all my pictures when I finally get them scanned in!!!  Till then – enjoy Pete’s pics

Just after getting back from Morocco (I’ll get a blog entry in soon, I hope) Pete and I got to go in for our first sonogram for the baby.  There is luckily all the expected parts (2 arms, 2 legs, a heart with 4 chambers, some other organs ….) so it looks like a healthy baby.  I’m very glad that there are no problems with the nugget.  It’s kind of a relief (even though I had suspected it was normal).

Pete got the sonogram pictures scanned in (http://pix.petermackay.com/v/2007/Nugget/)  Apparently they fade quickly - so the technician recommended getting them scanned in to the computer. 

We also found out the gender of the baby.  It looks like it’s going to be a baby boy.  So Pete will have to go through the second half of the baby names book (the girls names were at the front of the book).  I’ve got a top 10 list of names – but Pete doesn’t get to see them till he makes his own list.