Sunday 16th December
Eventually we arrived at the Todra Gorge, a massive cleft dividing the High Atlas and the Jebel Sarhro. We were told beforehand that the road was bad…this was no exaggeration, pot holed and flood damaged we crept along at a slow pace onwards and twistingly upwards for 26 kilometres to the campsite at Tamtattouchte. The views on the way up were breathtaking, I felt sorry for the driver who couldn’t really appreciate it properly! The sun was just setting so we saw fabulous pink rock and shadows. Much of the time the stream bed was dry but with boulders the size of bungalows strewn along it. It must be an awesome sight when it is running.
Ahhhhh, at last a clean and tidy campsite. Clean toilets, clean showers, rubbish bins emptied about 4 times a day…..brilliant! It really is very well run, we had a meal in the restaurant in the evening, all of the group ate together and then the staff brought out musical instruments to entertain us. Not our kind of music but when in Morocco!!!!
As we are staying here for two nights and then retracing our steps, we get a chance to see the gorge again in the morning with the light in a different direction. The base of the gorge is lined with stalls selling all sorts of “stuff”. If you were to stop you would be bombarded by requests to buy so it’s not really practical to stop for photo’s.
Monday was spent washing and drying and getting the van clean and tidy by me, while Nigel went on a 45k bike ride which included 2000 feet of ascent. He was rather tired when he got back, but he didn’t put it quite so politely. Both dogs are a little lame so we didn’t over exercise them here, they were quite content lying on their sleeping bag in the sun whilst I pottered about. However, I took them for a walk around the village for an hour in the afternoon and came back with a bit of a complex….all the children and young people (and there were many) that I saw, looked at us and burst out laughing!
Tomorrow we are setting off to Ouarzazate (pronounced Wozerzatt) and then it is only one day’s more drive to Marrakesh.
Anonymous
Love the blog, very entertaining- yo should write a book! Keep up the good work love steph x