The Todra Gorge

We drove north, then west, starting the return part of our loop, to the Todra Gorge – a gash in the mountains – and found a hotel. It’s perched on the Todra River, deep within vertical red walls. Our room faces the river, and for the first time in months, we can hear a chorus of frogs. Thom now has a head cold, and wants nothing more than to sleep it off. Ria is exhausted and sleeping as well.

Early the next morning we headed up the Todra Gorge, seeing the deep orange walls during the few hours a day when they’re sunlit, and not in their own shadows. Here in Morocco, protected lands are rare, and the Todra Gorge is not among the protected. Thus it is packed full of hotels clinging anxiously to the steep walls, stands selling identical chachkas and streams of brilliantly colored scarves, and generators running to power the hotels and the stands, their rumbling reverberating off the walls. Even with this ode to capitalism, the gorge is fantastic, and photos cannot do it justice.

At the end of the gorge is a Berber village of considerable size, made up of one-story mud-brick homes and the friendliest people we’ve come across. We got out and walked, and everyone spoke to us. Almost immediately Ria was accosted by a young woman who insisted on kissing her all over. A man invited us to his house, and although Thom resisted, I accepted, and he led us across fields of farina to his home. One room was the kitchen: a propane stove, a short table, and several well used pots. One room was the bedroom, with mats for several people to sleep on the floor. And one room was the showroom, with a loom at one end, and gorgeous Berber rugs all along the walls. He clearly invited us to tea so that he could sell us a rug, but we knew that going in, and it was wonderful to have tea with him and negotiate for a rug after we had become friends. We bought a gorgeous yellow and black rug that Ria insists is going in her room, but we know will be hung on one of our walls.