Holidays, pt 5

The next morning we woke up and, after breakfast, tried to find a rental car so that we could spend the next few days seeing the area and making our way to Fez. Unfortunately, we quickly discovered that all of the national rental places were out of cars and all of the small ones would cost a lot, as we would have to pay for a driver to pick up the car wherever we left it. So we decided, after some discussion, to take our hotel-owner up on his offer to arrange a "tour" for us. Basically, he told us that for 700dh each, we could get a driver to drive us that afternoon and the next day, then a camel ride and a night in the desert, and then a drive to the bus station on the third day. It was more money than I was hoping to spend, but overall it seemed like it would be a lot simpler than trying to do the same thing ourselves (I remained a little dubious about it).

While we were waiting for our driver to show up, we saw what there was to see of Ouarzazate, namely this casbah (with a very large stork nest). Then we stocked up for supplies for the journey, buying lots of prepackaged cheese, some bread, and delicious fruit-yogurt drink.


It turned out that our car for the trip was just a grand taxi, the old mercedes that make up the one of the primary transportation networks for many Moroccans (we saw lots of people in small towns waiting for a taxi with an empty seat to pass by and take them to the next town). Here it is:
Legally I think you can fit six passengers and a driver in the taxi (four in the back and three in the front) but we were squished enough with five:
Our driver was a very nice older man who spoke next to no English and only a little bit more French.

We originally wanted to go to Aït Benhaddou, featured in the movies Lawrence of Arabia and Gladiator, but the road there was closed due to the kings visit. So our first stop on the road ended up being this casbah, featured on the 50dh bill (due to a misunderstanding, we didn't actually go into it).

Then we saw a herd of wild camels on the side of the road, which was pretty cool:

And, just as the squishyness in the car was getting unbearable, we stopped at this large rock formation just outside of the Valley of the Roses for exploration and mint tea.

After we found our hotel in Boumalne-du-Dades, we got back into the taxi and drove up into the Dades Gorge, which had some pretty amazing views.

These rock formations are called Monkey's Paws.



When we got back to the town, we left our driver (with an agreed upon time for leaving the next morning) and set out to find a place to eat. In the process of looking, we bumped into two very friendly young guys, who were very interested in talking and telling us lots about life in the Dades Valley. They didn't speak very much English, so I got good practice with my French. They were both Berber, the people who lived in Morocco before the Arabs settled, and so we had some very interesting discussions about Berber life and their relationship to the Arabic state in Morocco. One of their grandfathers was a Berber anarchist and atheist who fought against the Arab settlers. It was a great meal, too!