Fresh Air & Fires

Day 2 and we headed up to the Atlas Mountains outside Marrakesh.
We got off the bus and did some hiking before sitting down for an amazing lunch.
We then went for a walk round the local village which included having mint tea with the locals and seeing the school.
The lady sharing the mint tea with us asked if we would refrain from taking pictures, we agreed but wondered why and our guide explained that there was a European tourist who took a picture of a Traditional Berber woman and used her head on an underwear model's body and put it on the internet.
Since then no one has been allowed to take photos of any Berber women.
Isn't that a shame, that one person's idiocy can ruin a whole culture's view of tourism and technology?

After dinner we sat round the fire and chatted and played cards.
It was great to get to know everyone, where they were from and what jobs they do.
At one point one of the women said she had a job with a lot of extra hours and hadn't had many weekends off, I agreed with her about the lack of weekends and said I could count on one hand the number of weekends - whole weekends - I had away from my desk last year.
On hearing this one of the women gave me an article from the guardian paper that she had brought with her about the top ten tips from writers about writing.
One of my friends has written a blog about this article and he didn't have a lot of love for it (http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/writersroom/2010/03/writers_10_rules_and_why_i_hat.shtml) but for me it was like a breath of fresh air.

As we sat round the fire I would read a bit of the article and make notes from it and then play a round of cards and I kept alternating like this depending on what game was being played and how many players they needed.
I couldn't help but wish it was this easy to alternate work with play back home but for now - just like the day we'd had - it was really nice.