Riad Salam 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.

... of photos. The driver took us around the outskirts of the city we were didn't get an essence of it really. The building looked beautiful thoughtd adobe walls. Soon we were heading out towards the mountain. I presume the Atlas. We were the wet side of them as there's was so much agriculture, this disppeared as we headed up to the high pass close to the snow line. Two stops one to buy water the other, toilet. It got dark quickly at 19:00.

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 ...

... this morning. Kasbahs are actually fortified buildings with four walls that rich caravan traders built for their families. At one Kasbah, they said that the women never left the Kasbah except for when they were born, when they got married, and when they died. My mom would hate that! Tomorrow we head over the Atlas mountains to Marrakech - on the road again! We will cross the highest mountain pass in all of Morocco and in all of North Africa before getting back to a big city.

... sertique, et a même un petit air "Ouest Américain". N'y a t il pas d'ailleurs de célèbres studios de cinéma dans la région de Ouarzazate ? Après avoir traversé rapidement la ville, nous rejoignons le Camp de l'Oasis, près du village de Tasselmant (sur la route de Skoura). Nous profitons alors d'un peu de repos, et pouvons nous promener le long de l'oued et dans la campagne aux environs du camp.

... s unexpectedly hard to stop for a photo - once you stop your car, children from all around start running towards the car and want some money. In one case they nearly broke the windows of our car, wow;). And if not children, there are some tourist-things-sellers nearby for sure;). So it's good to be quick or to stop at desert places. Back on the main road we cut the corners down into the valleys. And then comes a surprise, a police roadblock. Officers say something ...

... and the piece-de-resistance was the freshly made profiteroles covered with warm belgian chocolate sauce ... yum! We spent the night at a nice hotel across from the famed Kasbah of Ait Benhaddou. I was too exhausted to tour this UNESCO World Heritage Site, but the sunset on this clay city made for a great photo. The site is featured in the films Romancing the Stone & Gladiator.

... to spend 2 nights here, the others would also stay the same. It was so relaxed here, completely opposite to the previous day. The next day we went on a nice 4 hour walk through the gorge, and up the mountain side, and then down into the valley. We had a nice local berber guy take us around the whole time, he said he just loved travelling through the mountains, and did it many times a week, we meet him at our hotel. The berber guy offered us to come over ...