Ametis Club Karam Ouarzazate

... trees here for the wood for the kilns ? Anyhow it would appear that when it rains the mud bricks - well get muddy, so I think it's helped that the film sets help keep the place uptogether. We stayed at an OK but slightly dodgy mud brick hotel. First thing in the morning, 7.00 am we did the trek up through the Kasbar (read fortified town or village) to the Keep at the very top. It was a great time for this ...

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.<br><br> Thus, instead of struggling w/ mind-boggling taxi negotiations to navigate to Quarzazate (about 8 hrs. from Merzouga), I ...

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

Ait Ben Haddou is one of the oldest Kasbahs in Morocco. Onthe way to the hotel we saw goats on the side of a maountain. And from the roof of the hotel I took pictures of the kasbah and the neighbors garden. We met 2 German girls the next morning and gave them a ride to Casablanca. They were lots of fun.

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 ...

... touts annoyed us until we paid the 10 and wnt inside. There are steps leading in all directions and people kept pointing us in the way of the tourist shops until we decided to just make our own path to the top and get the good views over the site. Amazing place. We wandered back and hydrated in the hotel before going out to attempt the mission of purchasing stamps for the kids postcards. Tomorrow we go back out to the desert, this time to the real desert.

... 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.

... trading route between the salt mines in the Sahara in today's Mali and the imperial city of Marrakech and was controlled by the allegedly very belligerent Glaoui tribe of Berbers. Although a UNESCO World Heritage site, there were fortunately few tourists at Ait Benhaddou during out visit and also rather few persistent carpet and trinket salespeople but also little to do than wander around and take in the ambience of ...

... 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.

... The drive was very scenic, the red desert, the adobe villages in the hills all around, the snake-like roads sneaking up the mountain slopes, the massive colorful rocks rising out of the hills - amazing. I stopped in some places to take photos. One time I was just facinated by one of the hilltop adobe villages, this one on the other side of the road, so I drove to the side, parked the car, took my camera and got out of the car. There was no traffic, too, so I had the ...