The day after arriving in Marrakech we took a road trip to the Sahara. Our driver and guide, Saïd, met us at our riad, and led us out of the medina to our awaiting chariot (Toyota). We headed south and east toward Zagora, and after thirty minutes or so we were in the High Atlas Mountains.
One of the things we were most taken by was the villages built on the hillsides.
The buildings are built of clay and straw and stone, and even the roofs of the buildings are clay. Aside from the color, they are very much like the white villages we saw all over southern Spain.
They blend in extremely well because they are built of the same material as the hillsides themselves. Later in the drive we would see many buildings and villages that were crumbling, just falling back into the earth from which they are made.
boB in the High Atlas Mountains...
Parts of the mountains are quite green with terraces cut into the hillsides to form as much arable land as possible.
We stopped for a group shot with Saïd in front of a village along our route. Saïd comes from a village east of Zagora, on the very edges of the Sahara itself and is a university graduate capable of speaking a half dozen languages. Full of insight into Moroccan culture, he was amacable as well as lighthearted and added a lot of fun and humor to our adventure.
And wound our way up and up ...
And around...
And stopped at an overlook to see the road we had driven. Honestly, I couldn't tell you which way this road goes! It winds back on itself so many times that it is like a noodle in a bowl. It's amazing the road didn't cross over itself several times!
After sitting in the car for a while, looking out the window at the mountains, it was easy to forget momentarily that we were in Morocco. But road signs like this make it pretty obvious!
We stopped at Ait Benhaddou, one of the best preserved historic qasbahs (fortified cities) of the Atlas Mountains.
Ait Benhaddou is a UNESCO World Heritage site, and is accessible by a foot bridge over the Ounila river. Many of its inhabitants and/or their descendants now live in a new part of the village where running water and other ammenities are available. There are a handful of people still living in the old qasbah, and they are subsidized for building restoration and repair. UNESCO wants people to keep living in the qasbah so that it doesn't fall into ruin.
Here is the modern bridge over the Ounila river that connects the old qasbah with the new village.
It was obvious that Ali took a lot of pride in his home and his village. This photo was taken in his living room:
The paper above lists the names of movies that have used Ait Benhaddou for sets. The qasbah has featured in MANY films, many of them quite famous! Some of the biggest being Gladiator, The Mummy, and Lawrence of Arabia. Eventually, we would liketo watch some of these movies so that we can look for parts of Ait Benhaddou that we recognize.
Later on our walking tour, we called on an artist friend of Ali and received a demonstration of the art of Pyro-aquarelle.
This artist paints these water colors of desert scenes, and uses lemon juice. He then holds the papers over a flame, and the lemon juice darkens to form the shaded areas of the paintings. We watched him treat a couple paintings in this way, and was it fascinating to see the picture transform!
moM and daD at the top, looking over the desert.
moM and kiD walk across a dry portion of the river bottom back to the new village. The large gate seen in the background is not part of the qasbah - it's actually from the set of the movie Lawrence of Arabia! The gate is starting to show signs of wear, and is falling apart just a little, but it's amazing that it's stood for this long.
Not seen in this picture are the little boys who wait at the edge of the water. Without asking, and sometimes even being pushy about it, they automatically reach up to help people cross the river on the well-placed stepping stones. To be fair, if the offer is refused they do back off (which isn't the case for some of the street vendors we ran across in the cities!).
And when they all reach the other side the boys put out their hands and become quite insistent that they be paid for their unsolicited service.
This sort of thing is not uncommon in the tourist areas of Morocco. They are fairly poor people, and they know that tourists come from "rich" countries and have, what seems to them, to be a lot of money. So they "help" tourists with anything they need, whether or not a request is made for assistance, and then demand payment, sometimes scoffing at whatever amount is given as being too cheap. We even had people demand to be paid when we took a photo of their shop-front in the medina of Fès. It can be off-putting, and downright annoying, but it's part of the Moroccan experience for the modern day tourist.
Back in the new village, and heading back to the car. We still had a fair bit of driving left to go for the day...
Under the shrubbery on road side is a donkey! In fact, it's a donkey delivering the mint crop!
We wound our way through the Middle Atlas Mountains. The scenery was, well, look for yourself:
Again, incredible scenery. What an amazing part of the world!
It was a long drive, and we stopped several times to stretch. Along the way, Melinda became obsessed with doors:
And they really are cool doors! We all began to observe the doors, and noticed they are all different and obviously hand-made. We saw a couple of workshops along the road where doors were being made and painted. When we settle down we want to have doors like these...
Cool road sign:
Indicating that the person entering the roundabout yields to the person already going around the roundabout. Roundabout. Roundabout. Roundabout.
We drove through a river valley that contains over ELEVEN MILLION date palm trees. For MILES and MILES the trees go on:
Finally, we reached Zagora. Got out for a wee stretch and a bottle of water, and then ... Back in the car.
Oh yes, have we mentioned that you shouldn't drink the water in Morocco? We lived on bottled water, which was fairly cheap anyway. On the wallet that is... Just never mind the heavy thoughts about the consumption of large quantities of plastic. Cuz it's depressing.
A few kms outside Zagora we came across a most intriguing sign.......
Really? Camels? Seriously?
Well, no. Not seriously.
Let us be the first to state with no uncertainty whatsoever that, in spite of what you might read or see on the Internet, we did NOT ride camels.
Nope. Not us.
No camels.
Dromedaries!!
You see, camels have two humps. And these big guys had just a single hump!
Which we had to straddle.
And ride.
For about three or four miles.
Here's moM, looking good. "How ya doing, moM?"
"Fine! Having fun! Saddle is a touch uncomfortable. But I might get used it!"
We plodded along for a bit as the sun went down, feeling the rhythm of the came... Er, dromedaries feet padding across the sand.
"How ya doing daD?"
"Fine! Reminds me of the time I went on a horse pack trip in the Rockies with your uncle!"
"Yee Haw! Ride 'em Mahmoun!!" "Simmer down, daD!"
Melinda´s getting the sway of it here...
Once we got the sway of it the ride was a fair bit easier. Still tough on the inner thighs, though, for all the rubbing of the saddle.
"How ya doing, moM?"
"Okay... For now.... Are we almost there?"
And how's this for a family photo?
And here I think The Sway is going astray...
"moM? How's it going?"
"Uhhh... I think I've had just about enough... Are we there yet???"
Here's a kiD and moM portrait:
"Heya, moM! Doing alright?"
"Get me off this damn thing!!"
(To be fair, by this point we were all getting a bit sore. Dromedaries are WIDE buggers, and the saddles don't seem to be built for actual human comfort. And their long plodding gait is hard to adjust to, even with well-timed rocking of the hips to absorb the sway. So we all we're getting a fair bit abraded in some of our more tender areas, especially since the humps poked up right through the middle of the saddles!!!)
Here's a once-in-a-lifetime shot.... Family photo across the desert, with the moon rising just for us.
And our guide, Ibrahim, took our photo with the perfect backdrop.
Four of us, gallantly posed atop our perfectly silhouetted came.... Er, dromedaries. And daD's beast chooses just that moment to grab a mouthful of delectable desert dessert. Nicely done, Mahmoun.
Here's Ibrahim. A man of few words (in English) but he was fun and cool and safely guided us to our destination.
And along the way we had a most amazing view of a serene desert sunset.
Finally, after days and weeks and hundreds of kilometers across the desert! The oasis and camp!
Those other droms are from another group of folks who arrived before us. They've had their saddles taken off for the night, and are settled in.
When the droms are bedded down for the night, the drivers loosely tie a rope around the knee of one front leg. This keeps the drom from fully extending the leg. They're still able to walk around and stretch, but they have to hop. It keeps them from wandering too far in the night, and it also means they don't have to tie them up in one place.
Melinda took a particular liking to her dromedary, Sheriff, who was quite sweet and friendly. daD's beast was quite old and fairly cranky, and wasn't interested in head scratches at all!
Here's Melinda giving Sheriff a nice rub down. Dromedaries are big and kinda bony, and their fur is very thick. Sheriff loved to a scratch behind the ears, and sort of purred while Melinda massaged him. He was really sweet!
We asked how much to buy them and were offered a decent price, but we couldn't think of how to get them home on the bikes. (Days later it occurred to us that we could put the bikes on the dromedaries, but by then we were too far away to go back. And our butts were still sore anyway!)
We were treated to a Moroccan whisky (mint tea) and a nice veggie tagine in the dining tent, and after that the drom drivers had a drum circle around a campfire in the oasis. Then we retired for the night to our tent decorated with rugs and a nice fluffy bed. What a great night, and a fabulous way to end a magnificent day.
The next morning we awoke to a perfect desert sunrise....
(In the picture above you can see the drom standing with one leg folded.)
And the droms were scattered all over the place! They'd all moved around overnight, and had to be gathered up again for the ride out in the morning.
Turns out it was a bit windy that morning.
Good thing we were all prepared with our scarves to keep the sand out of our eyes!
daD's getting the knack of scarf wrapping, sort of. He's effectively keeping the sand out of his eyes, but it'd be nice if he could keep the scarf out of his eyes, too...
moM and daD opted for the sane way out of the desert oasis: they hitched a ride with Saïd in the chariot. Melinda and boB, however, couldn't get enough of the dromedary riding! It's seriously fun, and what an interesting way to get across the desert. If we had more time we'd love to ride them more, and our butts and legs certainly would get accustomed to the saddles.
Morning, Mahmah!
Here's Melinda loading up!
Here we are, ready to roll! Or, rather, plod... Today, boB is on Mahmoun, who daD was riding the night before. Mahmoun is an old guy, about 18. boB's looking rather regal atop his drom, and trying to hide the fact that he's still sore from the ride in!
Melinda is on Mahmah, who moM was riding the night before. Mahmah was pretty nice, too, but had a rather tall hump poking through the saddle! In fact, we both noticed that the droms that moM and daD rode in had significantly taller humps than the droms we rode. No WONDER they were so sore!!
But. Wait. Now we're riding them! Oh, no!!
And thank heavens for the scarves to keep the sand out of our faces! Besides that, they look pretty cool... :-)
The ride out that morning was shorter than the ride in. And we were sort of thankful for that... I mean, riding droms is fun, but if one's derrière is not accustomed to it then it can be a wee uncomfortable. By the time we dismounted we were sort of glad for it. But, at the same time, it was such an adventure that we already missed it!
Mahmah... A handsome beast.
And the parting shot - a face only a drom mom could love:
Ilā al-laqā', Mahmoun!
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