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.

Camels across the Sahara

We drove to the end of the road, in Rissani, and then some, to a small town on a dirt track, a series of low mud-brick buildings huddled against the winds at the base of the dunes of the Sahara Desert. It was the real deal, and it was incredible. We found a guesthouse that arranges trips to the dunes by camel, and over mint tea heard the stories of the owners. Isabelle is French and came to Morocco six years ago as a tourist. Here, she fell in love with Rachid, a Moroccan man of Berber origin, and just stayed. They bought the guesthouse, a couple of goats, a puppy, and now live a very simple life there. We asked many questions about their lives and travels, Moroccan education (compulsory from age 7 to 14, expensive after that and requiring the children to move to larger villages if they live some place very rural), and life in the Sahara Desert. Then Hassan, our guide, came with two camels, we loaded up, and were off.

It’s a tourist thing, taking camel rides into the Sahara. Camels are very rarely ridden, but instead are used to carry supplies – tents, tools, a kitchen, food, and of course water. Tourists ride, and are taken on a circuitous route through the dunes to an encampment, and are given mint tea and a full meal. They sleep in berber (or berberesque, I can’t tell) tents, and in the morning take a more direct route back to the village. It would be silly if it weren’t the best way to see the Sahara.

Instead, it’s incredible. Camels generally aren’t ridden by actual Berbers, because they’re pretty uncomfortable for long stretches, but for the hour and a half it takes to get to the encampment, it’s better than walking. They give you height and allow you to really see the desert, and of course riding takes less energy than stepping through deep sand. The encampment is comfortable, and it’s incredible to be out in the desert as the sun sets and the stars come out.

When we arrived, Ria played in what has been called the largest and greatest sandbox in the world with a passion appropriate to the name. She ran and danced and played, dug and threw sand, followed the tracks of little animals, climbed dunes and slid down them, wrote her name (and our names) in the sand, made “sand art” in imitation of the patterns the grasses make in the sand as the wind blows the tips across the sand, and laughed and laughed and laughed. For her, the most anticipated part of the trip was riding the camels, and the second most anticipated part was playing in the sand. So this day was absolute heaven for her.

In the evening, after we’d finished a rich chicken tagine followed by fresh fruit, the wind picked up and we crawled into the heavily carpeted tents to sleep on camp mattresses under thick blankets. I went outside and spent a long time just loving that I was in Africa, in the Sahara, under a crescent moon and a million stars, and taking my beautiful daughter to see such a beautiful and special part of the world.

I woke at five, before the sunrise, and climbed to the top of a dune and watched the sun rise. Our camels had been hobbled and had wandered about a quarter mile away, and I saw Hassan, in his bright blue robe and head scarf, stroll over the dunes to bring them back to our camp. Other camels on distant dunes were collected by their guides under the rosy pink skies. Hassan came and talked to me, and confirmed what I’d thought – that a Fennec fox had walked through our encampment during the night, leaving a trail of dainty little footprints behind. The winds had erased our footprints, and the sand was again rippled and clean – except for the tiny prints left by insects, rodents, lizards, and birds.

We headed back, and Thom chose to walk instead of ride. His camel never really liked him anyway. The whole way, Ria kept up a constant stream of observations, thoughts, plans, and in some cases craziness. She planned our next trip on the camels, and said we’d bring berries for the foxes, and would put five berries and five beetles (which foxes like) on a dish, and the foxes would come and eat them, and would want more berries, and would try to open the container of berries, and of course foxes like rodents too, so if she found a mouse she’d put it on the dish for the foxes too, and would “fasten” it so that it would stay there. She and I really loved the trip, and there’s a good chance we’ll come back for a longer trip, several days, maybe a week or two.

Here are many pictures of this most picturesque part of the world.

Our intrepid guide

After another wonderful meal poolside in the morning, we headed off, and discovered we were in a small eden, literally an oasis. Here are pictures of the oasis and the town built around it, plus a kasbah just outside the town.






















































The main road, which had been heading east, turns south, following the Drâa River, but we needed to continue east on a smaller road. No signs indicated where to go left, and we saw only one bridge that could take us across the river, so we took the dirt road to that bridge – a low concrete bridge covered with Moroccan peasants. Thom stopped halfway across and asked an old man in a jelaba if this was the route to Rissani, a main town a half-day’s drive east, and the man shook his head, No, and, while speaking Arabic and not French, indicated that we should turn back. But a young man on a bike who did speak French said, Yes, this dirt road continues only 2-3 km, and connects to the main road to Rissani. Follow him, he said, so we did…across many kilometers of rutted dirt road with rocks the size of cantelopes threatening our progress. Thom quipped (when not swearing) “Good thing the car rental guy showed me where the spare tire is.”

After more than 10 km had passed, and we appeared to be no where near a road, we stopped, had another conversation with the man, and were again assured that it was “seulement (only) 1 km” to the road. “Peut-être (maybe) 2 ou 3 km?” I asked, and he laughed and laughed, and assured me, no, only 1 km to the road. Five kilometers later we were delivered to a road that had clearly started much, much earlier. He had taken us on a long back route, across steep hills and on sandy and rocky pistes (dirt roads) on his mountain bike, I am sure because he felt obliged to be helpful. It’s in the Moroccan culture to be helpful, and he was, in a way. He was very kind and funny, and gave me his address in Agdz and invited us to come to his house for couscous and tagine on our way back through town. It’s too bad we’re taking a loop, and won’t be passing back through. I will send him a postcard, and hope that someone can read it to him. It was clear he was barely literate when he gave me his address, as he could not write it himself. I was so happy to meet him and chat with him, in my broken French, and even though Thom wasn't wild about the cross-country driving, he was happy to meet him too.

This was also the place where we saw our first road sign warning of errant camels!

The night in Agdz

We stopped briefly in Ouarzazate, and determined that Lonely Planet was correct in its description that this town is so strategically placed that it doesn’t need to rely on looks or charm to get by. We passed through, after watching a gaggle of girls struggle to cross the street without seeing because they’d used their headscarves to completely cover their faces to protect them from the blowing sand.

Very soon after that, darkness fell, quite suddenly, and although we’d planned to spend the night in N’Kob, we stopped earlier, in Agdz, and looked for a hotel. Easier said than done. Moroccan marketing isn’t what American marketing is, so although we saw signs telling us of the existence of two hotels recommended by Lonely Planet, the signs gave no hints as to where to find them. We bumbled about in the dark, followed a narrow dirt road into the Land of Barking Curs, and found the Rose du Sable, a guesthouse in a walled garden next to a palmerie “recommended by the Jolie-Pitts” according to LP, and stopped in. A gracious young man welcomed us, showed us a beautiful room in a rose-filled sanctuary, served us cold beers, and later fed us a generous and delicious dinner on the pool-side deck. We slept like rocks.

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.

Off to the Moroccan Desert

We left our riad in Marrakech with the aid of a porter Thom found in the Medina – an old man pushing a large cart we filled with our luggage. Despite traveling light this trip, we still managed to bring a mountain of bags, partly because we bought so many gifts and souvenirs, including a large dining room light. We’re not exactly sure how we’re going to get that on the plane home. We loaded up the car and plunged into Marrakech’s all-day traffic jam, and immediately got lost.

In Morocco, street names are unimportant, meaning that signs telling you where you are and how to get certain places don’t mention the name of the street – they just say, for example, to turn right to get to Fez. There is no way to determine if turning right will put you on the toll road, a major highway, or a donkey track, at least as far as we could tell. We found the same problem in rural Italy, so if we got lost, determining where we were on the map required triangulating from signs indicating where we could go to, rather than signs indicating where we were. “So, if we can turn right to get to Agdz and left to get to Agadir, we could be here or here or here, but not here.” Perhaps it’s purely cultural, but we prefer to know that we’re at the corner of Muhammed V and Muhammed VI, and then figure out which way to go from our map. Perhaps the system is the way that it is because a significant portion of the population is illiterate, or at least that no one has maps and everyone is a local. Anyway, after much confusion (a theme in our Moroccan driving experience) we found the route to Ouarzazate (pronounced war-za-zat) and were on our way.

Pictured below is an example: two sets of road signs, one almost completely blocking the other.