The route to Ouarzazate

The route to Ouarzazate is green and lush, until it crosses the High Atlas Mountains at a pass called Tizi-n-Tichka, which sounds more like a children’s book than the glory of the pass deserves to be called. The High Atlas Mountains create a rain shadow behind which lies a vast and incredibly diverse desert, a land beautiful and rich, and radically changing every few miles. Below are photos of this incredible landscape, presented in the order that we passed through them on the way from Marrakech to Ouarzazate to Agdz, where we spent the night.

Shortly after crossing the pass, Thom stopped the car on the side of the road to relieve himself, and Ria hopped out, anxious to get out of the car. After everyone got a good look at the broken glass amongst the stones and sandy dirt (there wasn’t anything else to look at, not even a view) we all hopped back in and discovered that Ria’s door would no longer latch. Just wouldn’t. With no tools to take the door apart and see if we could fix the latching mechanism, and being in, really, the middle of no where, we used the seatbelt to strap the door shut, running it through the inside door handle and the headrests in the back of the car. McGyver would be proud. One significant bonus of this arrangement is that we are able to ascertain, every time we make a hard right-hand turn, that the car’s door-ajar sensor works, and that the dashboard buzzer is still functioning. And fortunately for us, the route down the back side of the High Atlas Mountains is full of switchbacks, affording us repeated reassurances of the sensor and buzzer’s functioning. The regular buzzing has the added bonus of keeping Thom wide awake as he drives.