Ametis Club Karam Ouarzazate

Just quick entry to set the map pin. Suffice I lucked out and nabbed a guide in Merzouga who just happened to be headed to Marrakech to pick up 3 Spanish clients to guide them on a 10 day tour of Morocco.

Thus, instead of struggling w/ mind-boggling taxi negotiations to navigate to Quarzazate (about 8 hrs. from Merzouga), I verily whizzed south across ...

So here we are in the Dades Valley, attached to a Nomadic Berber (extended) family with their 230+ goats & sheep, 3 Mules, 10 Camels, 4 Dogs, 3 Donkeys, & 2 Chickens. Family runs from Grandma down to the 2 year old & from here for 7 days it's trek, camp & cook with them.
We have our guide (Lassan) & cook (Ahmed) so we can communicate & eat if not easily wash etc.
On the way up we drove through Ouarzazate (think film sets ...

The drive from Taroudannt gets more and more barren and the road deterioates to a single lane of bitumen and becomes more mountainous. Taxis and trucks play chicken with Terry so we spend a fair it of time in the dust. Fortunately there is not much traffic. We are staying out of the town again in a kasbah, which is a large house with four towers built around a courtyard ...

Wednesday the 25th. I got the train to Helen's in Woking. She had to work. I was lucky to have started annual leave already although had had to do 4 extra shifts over the weekend due to us being so short staffed and sickness. She took me straight out to her cobblers to sew my gaiters on. I hoped the glue would be enough but the added stitches wouldn't hurt. We had pizza for tea at my request and then watched old episodes of the MDS as ...

Ouarzazate in itself is not a very interesting town. But because of its location, it is great as a jumping off point for excursions into both the sahara and picturesque gorges, two trips we wanted to take. We arrived on an unusually rainy and cold day. We had no idea how we would do these little excursions; busses didn't really go where we wanted and renting a car was too expensive. We were intent on meeting some people ...

Breakfast early then left at 8:30am. Back out through Todra Gorge to the town of Tinehir (where the hammam was). First stop was a handicapped association that intrepid supports where the men and women make pottery, candles, jewellery etc. I bought 2 lovely scented candles and a bangle (had to fight off Aussie Mike as we both liked the same one). Next stop some local markets where we bought bananas and peas (11dhs a kilo) and 2 more bangles ...

... you wont know how much to pay). Then a string of other questions follow like asking which country you are from (they know how much tourists from each country will pay based on past sales), then will ask how long you will stay in their town (if it is a small town they know they will no doubt see you again and have longer to form a relationship with you and score the sale), they can spot if you are freshmeat because they notice everybody and then if you do buy then they will ...

... Thankfully we were not travelling to Timbuctu by camel! Again, we travelled through amazing vistas, rugged and barren broken by the lushness of fertile valleys. We lunched in Ouarzazate and travelled on to Errachidia for the night.

... of the inside of this Kasbah, which was nice because we didn't get to go in most of the buildings previously, although only about 30% of this Kasbah is open to tourists. The rest of our ride back consisted of rain! Yes, and believe it, snow. We drove through the mountains, saw boulders and red running water(from the dirt on the mountains there) as well as enjoying our driver's crazy skills again. None the less, this two day trip was well worth its efforts.

... a welcome respite from the gathering chill. Our gîte was simple. The locals build the gîtes mostly by hand out of the clay and rocks they find in abundance in the mountains. Our room was furnished with two mattresses on the floor. There was no heat and the "showers" consisted of a dribble from a hose that ran hot only for a brief period of time. The beauty of living like this was when night fell you had very little to do but go to sleep and wake ...