Flora consisted mainly of palm trees, a rather beautiful climbing plant with a bite (had huge spikes interspersed between the blossoms and the leaves), cacti, very coarse grass. The only animal life I saw were black, thin and oriental-looking cats, kittens in a box at the medina, sheep at the side of the road, a buzzard (the owner was calling everyone to have their photograph taken with the eagle - I informed him it is a buzzard, he wasn't happy), camels, skinny frail-looking horses, mules, donkeys, sparrows, blackbirds, sardines, dogs, sparrows in tiny cages (why, why, why), something that looked like a cross between a coyote/wolf/fox dead at the side of the road. Most of the countryside we travelled through was barren except for olive groves, rivers had dried up and in the far distance you could spot the Atlas Mountains.
