Oscar Ouarzazate

... interiorior of Morocco - in a nice new Toyota 4x4. We sped though Todra Gorge, the Dades, Valley of the Roses et al, and landed for the night at a lovely little riad overlooking the city. Had a beer (along w/ my Muslim guide!) on the rooftop terrace, dinner, and then set off for Marrakech the next morning.

Will fill in the blanks/post pics later...

... passes & ledges; I also lose count of the times we criss-cross the stream on the way up.
Ahmed continues to star with casseroles & soup (& pancakes/omelettes in the morning) but on Day 3 a goat finds its way to the pot & we are 'honoured' with barbequed offal in stomach/intestine lining. Day 4 inevitably brings goat casserole.
So we finally make the villages at Zawyat Oulmzi where there is a hostel we share with a Belgian school group.

... with our guide who wants to charge double for this unwanted service. In another valley there are roses growing. They make rose water from the roses which are grown around the edge of other crops. There are lots of old kasbahs in the area, many in ruins and we wander through one of them. Its dark and cool inside as the clay walls are very thick and the windows small.

... sat with the bags. Not sure what had happened but it was quickly sorted and headed through. I had hoped to get food just in case but we were late so we headed on through. The guy checking our boarding cards said that someone else was doing the race but we couldn't see a likely perosn. As we boarded Neil made hinmeslf known he'd packed all his stuff onto the plane. We were concerned in case he got seperated from his running shoes. We ...

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 ...

... We dumped our bags in our rooms (we had an amazing view over to the Kasbah, the bathroom had a timber door and ceiling and the sink was tiled with stones) and headed up to the roof for mint tea. We headed down with Abdul and Action who pointed out the gate which was used in the movie Jewel of the Nile (or Neil Diamond according to Action). We then had to cross a creek to get across to the Kasbah. A few of us took our shoes and socks ...

... dropped them and lost them about six times now and they always come back. Don has definitely put a curse on them. I fumbled around pretending that i couldnt see without them so the driver would think he has done a really good deed as all good Ramadan Moroccans are supposed to and gave him no tip because all i had was a 100 dirham note. I did put him on my gratitude list that night because the sun is crazy bright here and i fear i would either burn my eyeballs or risk eye ...

... melt in the infrequent desert rainstorms and disintegrate if not regularly repaired, resulting in plenty of ruined casbahs throughout the Valley. Our main stop in the valley was Ouarzazate, a Berber desert town and tourist center of the south with plenty of shops, hotels, and a large UNESCO restored casbah. Ouarzazate is also considered the movie center of Morocco and home to several successful film studios as its desert surroundings can easily double for many parts of ...

Ssalamu 'lekum!! We left the cool, overcast coast at 6:00 am. and headed east by bus. Three hours later we hailed a taxi to start our trek on the road of a thousand kasbahs....over the Oued Zat and began to climb up towards Tizi n' Tichka - the top of the pass over the Anti Atlas - winding our way through the valley of green fields, and beautiful scenery. Everywhere we turned a new little town (Aits "place" of....) appeared ...

Another long day of driving but the scenery was mind-blowing as the road wound through the Anti-Atlas mountains. Around 10:35 we drove over the highest pass in Morocco - named Tizi-n-Tichka - at 2260m above sea level. The drive came to an end in the village of Imlil (because we ran out of road - smiles) and most of us rode donkeys up the steep, gravelled path to our homestay. My music player ...