There’s nothing worse on a long road trip than getting sick. I’m talking about the ailments that overcome you with such enthusiasm that you are incapacitated with misery. None of these ailments are fatal, but they’re damned inconvenient, often in the most uncomfortable of ways.

My intense desire to avoid food poisoning and other gastrointestinal ailments when in out-of-the-way places begins on a sorry night in 2000, in Morocco’s Atlas mountains, near the village of Zaouia Ahanasel. As is frequently the case in such situations, the cause of my illness was unexceptional. Only in looking back during my long bouts of reverie in the outhouse do I figure out where I made the fatal mistake.

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Our drive through Morocco was more an excursion than a journey. At the time, we didn’t realize we were doing a practice run for things to come. We just wanted to see a broad cross-section of the country at our own speed and in a compressed amount of time. It seemed clear to us that the best way to do it would be to rent a 4×4, buy some maps and drive ourselves wherever we wished to go. So, we did.

Even on so short a trip, and with no expectations of applying our experience to something more rigorous in the future, we each fell into what later became our standard roles. Bernard drove. I handled the maps and the snacks.

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