Hotel Fint 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 ...

... been built by the owners but been done in an authentic way. The walls are mud and the ceiling lined with palm canes in lovely patterns. The area is a very desolate stony landscape but there are sudden patches of green wherever water is available. We get taken on a wild goose chase through extremely narrow bumpy lanes of a palmerie (lot of palm trees) and have an ...

... desert. Just to let you know, camels make the most god awful noise when they dont want to stand up. Imagine waterboarding chewbaca. Someone said its just like riding a big dog. I dont know about you but does that sound easy? We stopped to watch an amazing sunset then continued on our way. At the end of the camel trek into the desert we came upon some Berber nomad tents set up for us. There we made camp and had ...

... these essentials with us.We had been promised a hot meal on the flight but you had to buy sandwhiches at £6, coke was £2. I was pleased I had a malt loaf with me. The guy in front of us was reading something on the MDS so I said hello, he wasn't very chatty at all so I presumed he had trouble with English. We were 30minutes late flying at 12:30 for the 3.5 hour flight to Marakesh. It was only now I realised that the others were flying ...

... wanted to do similar things so we could split costs. The next day we started cruising all the car rental agencies looking for like minded travellers. As judgemental and picky as Elise and I are, this was not an easy task. We were lucky enough though to find two French guys who were trying to rent a car that was over their budget. After a few formalities, and discovering we all wanted to go into the desert, we were off. At ...

... first, we seem to be getting better at keeping control of situations here. Luckily some Polish travellers, some Berbers and turban wearing men shared the ride making up the six passengers we needed to get the good deal. In Rissani the driver tried it on for us to give him money for our bags but we had already negotiated an all inclusive deal and told him to get lost. We went to the grand taxi stand where an attendant was writing taxi trip information on a chalkboard and ...

... was clear till lunchtime when the sand started marching. Can't do much justice to what followed by using mere words, but imagine you were dunked, eyes open, into a huge, muddy, raging torrent but stayed dry - there's your sandstorm. Magnificent wall of streaking sand rocketing skyward ten feet in front, air thick, sun all but a pale area above your right shoulder. Berbers just kept on plodding till we reached M'Hamid and relative calm. Most ...

... arrived at the top, just to see the sun rising above the low lying clouds and flood the dunes with the clear yellow morning light. It was magical. After many photos, we made our way back down again to join Megan and her mother who stayed down the bottom chatting to the camel guide as he showed them how to rap their scarves around their heads to protect it from the sand. We made it back to base by 7:30am for breakfast outside. It was four ...

The beauty of this trip is the great diversity we are experiencing in terms of landscape. I was very glad to pack up quickly and get out of the desert... can't see myself doing this again apart from the trekking trip in the Andes next month. It was rough and definitely memorable. Rates up there with my night on top of Mt Sinai back in 2000. That was hard but having sand blown into your ...