The drive back down the Todra Gorge was equally breathtaking, the sun was just coming up and the rocks were bathed in pink light. We left quite early and stopped part way down the gorge to have our breakfast. Fortunately, no-one arrived to try and sell us anything. It wasn’t a good place for the dogs to have a run though….broken glass everywhere, such a shame. Just before we stopped, we noticed a woman, two children, a baby on her back and a little goat running along beside her, climbing down the steep rocky bank towards the road. Shortly after, the school bus came towards us so we guess this lady was taking her children to catch the bus.
Breakfast stop in the Todra Gorge
Tinehrir Kasbah, bottom of gorge
Eventually we arrived at the town of Tinherir at the bottom of the gorge and turned back onto the N9 towards Ouzerzate. The road surface improved a little but not as much as we had hoped. Steve had said that when we reached the next campsite he would make soup for everyone which would be ready at 3pm. We in the meantime decided we would try and scope out the “Valley des Oiseaux” where all kinds of rare birds have been spotted, so we sent Steve a text to say we might not make it in time for soup.
Typical scenery en route to Ouzerzate
As above with Nigel’s camera
Unusually colourful outfit
However, Maggie’s map reading skills are not as good as they might be, we missed the turning. We decided we would turn round and as there was a roundabout within about 7k we were going to turn there…….. BUT little did we know the roundabout was in the middle of a bustling beeping horned market town and we would have had to renegotiate a very busy place twice more if we turned back….so we carried on.
Traffic chaos on market day
We’ll leave that for another time!!! We eventually found a place at the side of the road where we could pull in for lunch and had a nice view of the High Atlas as we ate our sandwiches.
Lunchspot
Tantalizing glimpses of the snow capped Atlas
We carried on to Ouzerzate where we easily found the campsite and I got ribbed for my faux pas. Some of our group were having desert scenes painted onto their camper vans when we arrived. The Berber guy who was painting was amazingly talented and didn’t mind us standing around watching while he worked.
We had our soup which had been saved for us as a starter to our evening meal and very nice it was too.
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