Route During Week Ten

We reluctantly bid farewell to Fes and head south towards Azrou in the Middle Atlas Mountains, home to the Berber or Amazigh people as we understand they prefer to be known. They have rejected the name Berber as it is used as a pejorative term and because of its colonial connotations. 

The scenery on this part of our journey changes frequently from gently rolling hills to dense forest to rocky mountains coloured brick red through to a gentle golden. 

On the way to Azrou, we stop at a viewpoint high up in the mountains, another breathtaking vista in which Morocco seems to specialise.  We're entering fossil country - Morocco is one of the most geo-diverse places in the world. Exposed rock full of minerals and fossils covers vast areas of terrain containing matter created between 4.6 billion and 541 million years ago.

There are several huts in the car park of the viewpoint, selling fossils.  Nick is very taken with the geodes - rocks that have been split in half to reveal beautiful crystals within; Janette finds a starfish fossil which is more her thing. 

As with most shopping transactions in Morocco, the bargaining begins, but this is bargaining with a difference.  The trader is very keen to swap goods, in particular, he would like clothes, shoes, or blankets. We don't have much to trade as we’re travelling light but we rustle up a warm blanket and swap that plus a small amount of cash for Janette’s fossil; it’s a really fun experience.

We arrive at Euro Camping Emirates which has as its entrance a Disneyesque castle, not what we were expecting.  The campsite is peaceful and we receive a friendly welcome and chat with a nice Dutch couple who are on an eight-month trip around Europe and Morocco.  

We decide not to visit the town of Azrou the next day but to press on south - heading towards the High Atlas Mountains.

We end up wild camping on our own, just south of Midelt in a place identified on the map as Er Rich although there’s no settlement there. 

Our spot for the night is flat ground well off the road with uninterrupted views of the High Atlas Mountains and what a sight they are! 

We sit outside and watch the sunset, we spend a very peaceful night and then are up in time to see the sunrise the next morning.

We have found a campsite that sounds lovely - Camping Tissirt - and so we aim for that.  It proves to be yet another incredible drive through the first gorge we have yet encountered here, the Ziz Gorge. 

Our heads are spinning with the assault on our senses that Morocco has mounted, smells, sights, and sounds.  Today it’s most definitely sights!

The gorge is superb and we feel very small and insignificant in the face of beauty on such a large scale which has been here for so many millions of years.  

At one of our stop-off points we meet a lovely German couple, Natascha and Bernd, who are also travelling in Morocco for the first time, we chat for a while and then move on but we keep seeing each other on the road as one or other of us stops to take photos, there are so many amazing sights.

In particular, we get out to look at a deserted Kasbah.  The village is still occupied but by more modern buildings, relatively speaking, on the other side of the road.

We also spot and stop to explore an old cemetery, the graves are indicated by simple, unmarked standing stones and there is a small, now-derelict building, a funerary chapel perhaps? The place appears abandoned and has a forlorn air about it. 

Ali, the owner of the campsite greets us and we sit with him to drink tea, a very Moroccan gesture of hospitality.  Ali owns the campsite and the adjacent date orchard.  His dates are delicious and he has some for sale - yes, please! 

The next morning we explore on foot the nearby village which is still coming to life. It's peaceful here in the oasis that runs along the bottom of the gorge.  There is nothing here for tourists, no cafes and no souvenir shops, just the gentle rhythm of village life. We get talking to a young girl making the best we can of our broken French and she walks along with us for a while.  Our dogs cause the local strays to go into a frenzy of barking and they follow us along making one heck of a commotion until some helpful locals shoo them off.

Another big day today, we are going to reach the desert, a goal for us on this trip. Before we leave the Ziz Gorge, we backtrack a little to the viewpoint we visited yesterday where we want to have a coffee, buy our desert headscarves, and admire the view once more before we go. 

We are delighted to bump into Natascha and Bernd again. We agree to meet them that evening and camp together in the desert. 

The drive proves interesting with a mix of hazards along the way!

We leave the mountains behind us and head on into the flat plain that will eventually transform into the towering dunes of Erg Chebbi.

South of the town of Erfoud, the landscape becomes what we had imagined most of Morocco would be like, vast, barren, and mainly deserted.  

Unfortunately for us however the police are still present manning one of their frequent roadblocks. 

The speed limit reduces from 60 to 40 and then to 20 kph in a matter of a few metres; we are looking at the policeman waiting for him to wave us through but he gestures to us to stop.  He tells us that not only were we speeding but that we failed to halt at the stop sign.  He would like us to pay 400 Dirhams (£38.00) but is willing to take less! We somehow get involved in talking about football, and he discovers our team is Chelsea and by chance he has the Chelsea - Fulham match playing on his mobile phone.  He sends us on our way with no fine, his parting words ‘Stamford Bridge’! 

The final road to the desert is long, straight, and featureless and then we see them, the golden dunes rising from the plain.  From a distance, they look like a mountain range...

but as we draw nearer their deep orange colour reveals itself (we are told they change colour dramatically in different lights).

We are silenced by the scene before us, neither of us has seen desert dunes on this scale before, it’s quite an emotional moment. 

We end up at Auberge la Tradition which is a little way out of town and where we can park right next to the desert dunes.  It’s surprising how the stony terrain gives way quite abruptly to deep sand and very quickly indeed to high dunes.  

That evening we meet with our friends as planned and we sit around the campfire eating, drinking, and chatting until well past midnight. 

The highlight of the night is Natascha and Bernd presenting us with the pelt of a Moroccan Wild Cat!  It’s quite an alarming thing, it’s rigid and still has the skin of one of its testicles attached... very exciting to sniff if you're a Springer Spaniel!  They were given it by a Moroccan man and feel the need to pass it on to us - how kind, we are deeply touched!

We decide to take a trip by camel out to near the border with Algeria to stay in a Bedouin camp for the night.

The weather is really lovely during the day out here but very cold at night and the environment is harsher than we had anticipated. Of course, we knew it would be dry and sandy but we didn’t take into account the amount of fine dust there would be in the air.  Very quickly our skin and lips become dry and we can feel the dust in our nostrils as we breathe in.  The scarves were a very necessary purchase.

There is nothing graceful or dignified about getting onto a camel! We all scramble up as best we can and hold on for dear life as the camels lurch to their feet and we’re off.

Millie and Pip accompany us on foot.  We ride for about an hour and as we approach the camp we see the edge of the desert and Algeria in the distance.

We've ridden camels before, but had forgotten just how uncomfortable they are!

We are shown our tents which although the walls are decorated with jolly material, just consist of a mattress on the floor and that’s it!

We enjoy more tea and a meal, and the evening ends with traditional music around the campfire. We knew it would get cold in the desert at night, but we are freezing! 

When we go to bed we pile the blankets high and then we’re pinned down under the weight, we wouldn’t say we had a good night’s sleep - but the dogs seemed to manage!

Truthfully, we are a bit disappointed with the whole Bedouin camp experience, we feel a bit processed through; the hospitality felt a bit half-hearted but never mind it was worth it to wake up the next morning on Janette's birthday and watch the sunrise over the dunes.

We leave the desert and head back towards the mountains but it’s a long way to go before we get there, lots of dry and flat terrain to cover.  On the way we come across a place - a tourist destination though no tourists are there - where there are lots of mounds in the earth and signs inviting us to come and view the 'channels', our curiosity is piqued and we stop.  

Our guide, Hakim, explains that the mounds, which we now see have holes in them, were wells leading to underground waterways dug out by hand and through which the water coming down from the mountains was channelled.

The channels led to an oasis where villagers had designated times when the water was available to them to irrigate their fields.  The wells meant water was constantly available in the villages for domestic use.

The water channels dried up and the villagers left about 75 years ago, all that is left above ground now are the wells which look like craters on the moon, and underground the dried-out channels which it’s possible to walk down into. 

They are amazing, high enough to stand up in easily, and about 6 feet wide. Hakim explains that in the intense summer heat, he and his family sleep in the channels as they are always cool.

We then visit Hakim’s father in his traditional home constructed of rammed earth.  We are given tea and encouraged to buy some jewellery.  In the end, we swap some beers and some whisky for a bracelet and a lovely rendition of Happy Birthday to Janette!  

As we are leaving, Hakim’s father comes after us and gives us a ring and a fossil pendant as presents, a touching gesture.  We leave them savouring the whisky as we wave them a cheery goodbye.

As we near the Todra Gorge we notice, set into the hills a vast semi-ruined and mostly deserted kasbah. We discover later that these kasbahs were abandoned in favour of more modern dwellings with amenities such as electricity and piped water, which is understandable.

We arrive at the Auberge Camping Lelac at the beginning of the Todra Gorge and have a lovely evening.  We eat in the Auberge and they light the fire, especially for us, we have a delicious dinner and they even produce a cake with a candle!  A lovely birthday and certainly a memorable one.

The next day we walk up through the gorge but the truth is we can’t see much as we are in amongst the trees.  We can of course see the gorge sides towering above us but we don’t have any far-reaching views.  That’s not to say we don’t enjoy the walk, on the contrary it’s fascinating.  In the valley bottom, hidden from the road is a whole network of small fields with an ingenious system of irrigation channels and pipes.

We return to Lionel and decide to drive up the gorge as it seems a shame to have come all this way and not see it in full.  It is worth seeing but perhaps not as awe-inspiring as we had anticipated. 

There is a part of the gorge that becomes quite narrow and one side of the gorge is lined with traders selling tourist merchandise.  We go to a viewing point and Nick gets involved in protracted negotiations to swap beers and rum for yet another djellaba!

Then it’s on to the next destination, Dades Gorge of which we have high hopes.  The drive is further than we think.  On the way we stop in a small town to buy some fruit and we are mobbed by children who would like money but will settle for sweets. 

At the fruit stall we are given a plastic bowl, fill it with what we want, it’s then weighed and we pay the tiny price.

As we enter the Dades Gorge the rock colour becomes striking, some parts are still golden but the majority is a deep brick red/maroon colour interspersed with green/blue sections; coupled with the rock formations and unusual strata known as monkeys’ fingers it's very dramatic.

We arrive at a really lovely campsite, Ait Oudinar where we've arranged to meet up with Natascha and Bernd again. This is a family-run site and it shows, they care about their guests.  Ibrahim supplies us with a groundsheet and a table and chairs and serves tea and cake.  We receive complimentary, fresh Moroccan crepes on both mornings we are there and tea and cakes again on the second day.

We wander into the countryside at the back of the campsite which involves crossing a homemade wood and rope suspension bridge - more robust than it looks. 

We head over to the small village where there is a co-operative selling locally made goods - jewellery, rugs (of course!), ceramics, and some antique items.  

The shopkeeper, Mohamed, offers us tea and cake and we choose a couple of bits of jewellery but Janette has her eye on an ancient, wooden door - a Dogon Door -  which is beautifully carved.  Mohamed tells us it is from an old kasbah and that it is ‘very, very’ antique!   The carvings on the door look more sub-Saharan African than Moroccan but we really like it.  Lengthy negotiations follow with lots of laughter and fake horror on both sides at the prices asked and offered.  Eventually, we seal the deal and start to leave but undaunted, Mohamed tries to sell us a rug - we resist! 

Natascha and Bernd very kindly offer to drive us up the gorge as we've been told it isn't suitable for larger motorhomes, so we aren’t sure how far we’ll be able to get in Lionel. 

What a drive this proves to be!  We climb up the gorge via a series of hairpin bends and handily there’s a viewing point at the top with a cafe where you can stop and look back to photograph the road... and of course, leave the obligatory sticker! 

We press on beyond this point; we’ve had various bits of advice saying it will be difficult from here but we don’t find that to be the case and we could easily have managed it in Lionel.

There is a point where the road narrows and the gorge face hangs low over the road, it’s thrilling to drive it.

The views in this gorge are truly spectacular, it’s difficult to find words to adequately describe such a landscape and maybe it’s best to let Nick’s photos speak for themselves except to say that if you ever have the chance to visit this place, you should do so.