An Unplanned Year

Day 7

Today we drove south from Fes, through the Mid-Atlas mountains to the Atlas mountains to the Sahara region.

What a range of scenery in one day!

From a rainbow to a forest with snow and 2 degrees;

rocky, snowy  plateaus, to windy mountainsides;

oases in magnificent sandstone valleys

to sand blowing across the road at the edge of the Sahara Desert.

A long driving day, but the landscape literally changed from hour to hour. We had a delicious camel tagine for lunch!

Overnight at Arfoud.

Day 8

After an easy morning we headed to a local market and a fossil place-there are lots of fossils found in this area.

We then drove to Merzouga for lunch and entertainment by a group of gnaoua musicians. Lunch was “medfouna” – a meat filled bread local to this area.

We then took 4WDs into the desert to meet some camels, the rode them to our camp for the night!

We watched the sun set over the sand dunes and then enjoyed a delicious dinner and some amazigh music and same bad dancing (ours).

Overnight: Golden Camp Merzouga.

Day 9

With clocks going back an hour for Ramadan, it was theoretically an early sunrise, viewed from the sand dunes.

We had another camel ride out of the desert before heading off for our day. We drove back the way we came, this time seeing the meat market, not the vegetable market. We also saw some nomad camps.

We stopped to look at the Khettaras – and ancient irrigation system that is a series of wells into an underground Qanat (aqueduct/tunnel) that was dug by hand and run over many dozen kilometres. The Qanat directs water from the mountains to the oases and farmland.

We drove to Tinjedad and walked through an old fortified village. Around 20 families still live there, the rest all moved into new houses. We ate lunch here-the restaurant helps fund the restoration of the village.

From there we drove to Todra Gorge-300m high cliffs either side of a stream.

Overnight: Bourmane Dades.