Hotel La Perle Du Sud 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 ...

... 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 ...

... completely, rolled up our pants and waded across, which turned out to be the best way as Sharon and English Mike ended up falling in and got their shoes wet. Some of the local kids were doing a good business helping tourists get across. The Kasbah is the most exotic and best preserved in the Atlas region and it was a nice walk. We climbed up the hill at the back to the ruins of the fort for an amazing view (and of course photos and another ...

... with Moroccan men without them. We checked into a nice hotel next to a giat Kasbah Hotel where film crews are staying and ate our own picnic of fresh produce on sandwichs made by Nadine. We can make out the outline of the city in the dark and cant wait till sunrise to see it in all its glory. Joy. We still havent found a magic lying carpet or genie lamp. We have our three wishes ready though. Roast dinner with family, a night in at the Tugun penthouse watching DVDs and a picnic with our friends.

... world from the Holy Land to the American Wild West and have done so in such movies as Sheltering Sky, The Man Who Would Be King, The Last Temptation of Christ, Living Daylights, Kundun, Jewel of the Nile, The Mummy, Alexander the Great, and Lawrence of Arabia. I am not a major movie buff per se but was somewhat disappointed when the majority vote in the group (I think it was 11 to my 1) nixed Dave's suggestion that we stop for a visit at Atlas Studios outside of Ouarzazate.

... men riding donkeys carrying heavy loads, herds of goats or sheep being herded by Berber women, children scampering off to school....lots of activity for such tiny places. As we zig and zagged down the mountain it looked as if we were back home in northern Arizona...the landscape is so much like the Navajo reservation...beautiful colors of rock and wind blown formations....and heat....lots of it (of course it is dry) but no a ...

... supplying me with Latin music during the ride ... somehow thought that it was appropo ... lol Interaction with local Berber families was not as good as I expected. Maybe because all 12 of us were with the family and a host of other student visitors were there as well. I did have some henna done by one of the young girls. Dinner was tasty & the entertainment by the ladies of the house was lively.