From the Atlantic across the High Atlas into the northern Sahara

That title is a mouthful. It encompasses so many different biospheres, so many cultural places, so many geological gems. It spans the better part of Morocco, from west to east, covering a vast swatch of this beautiful country. Trying to capture all this in one blog entry is a difficult thing to attempt, but I hope that at least some of the photos will convey a fraction of the beauty that we have encountered this past week.

After spending five days in Marrakech (including the day trip to Imlil) it was time to move on. We had booked a 15-day tour that included a private Land Rover Prado with driver as well as all hotels and breakfasts, a number of dinners, and various excursions. At 10:00 a.m. on New Year's Eve we stepped out of our Airbnb and were met by Aziz, our driver and friendly companion for the next two weeks. With a broad smile he greeted us, loaded our luggage in the well-kept Toyota, and off we went. The smiles and promptness would carry on for the remainder of the trip.

Not only was Aziz an excellent driver,
but he also showed selfie-taking and drumming talent!

The first day's drive took us west from Marrakech to the Atlantic harbor of Essaouria, a UNESCO World Heritage Site thanks to its perfectly preserved medina. We followed the N8 through the slightly rolling plains north of the Atlas Mountains, an arid area (what is not arid in Morocco?) that shows few signs of extensive agricultural usage except around some of the occasional hamlets and some of the larger towns, of course. The region's biggest claim to fame seems to be the Argan nut tree that grows along the side of the road once one has passed through Chichaoua; photos of goats climbing into these thorny trees (similar to mesquite and acacias) and munching on green leaves are used by the government's tourism branch to advertise Morocco and its argan oil production. We didn't see the goats but stopped to check out the trees themselves and the olive-sized nuts.

It's about 110 miles from Marrakech to the Essaouria, but with a speed limit of just 80 kilometers-per-hour in most places (and frequent radar and police controls) drivers take it easy and noodle along at the prescribed 50 miles per hour. It didn't take us long to realize that Aziz is a safe and prudent driver who obeys all traffic laws—fine with us!

After a few stops here and there, the last one overlooking Essaouria and the coast from a vantage point that not only attracted tour busses and their foreign contents but also trinket vendors and camel wranglers hoping to part those who had stopped from a few dirham, we slowly descended to Essaouria's modern seaside boulevard that ended at a parking lot just outside of both the fishing harbor as well as the walled medina. Aziz quickly procured a local porter for us who, with a two-wheeled cart, transported our belongings to the Casa.b Mogador, an unorthodoxly named 5-star hotel that is being run by a French/Arabian couple and one of the most friendly staff you could imagine. When I say "unorthodox" I'm referring only to the first part of the name and not the Mogador, which is the old name for Essaouria, meaning "windy city." The gregarious owners welcomed us with tea and light snacks and were, well, overwhelmingly friendly. And our room was simply overwhelming, too.

Lucky us: We were to stay here for two nights. The hotel is as modern as one could ever ask for, yet in a traditional style; the rooms are spacious, the mattresses and sheets heavenly, the showers large and fancy, and the thick cotton robes luxurious. The hotel has a tiny footprint, being in the middle of the medina, yet its multilevel layout is sensible and pleasing. The roof terrace that gives a 360-degree view of old Essaouria crowns it all.

We spent our time in Essaouria walking on the beach below the fortified old town, clambering over rocks and watching the Atlantic rolling in. Later we walked through the bustling fishing harbor where the catch of the day was being hawked while traditional fishermen repaired nets, sliced ropes, or painted their small vessels. Imagine the backdrop of Moorish gates, a perfectly deep blue sky, and the screaming of the seagulls. We knew that this trip would bring us moment after moment of new impressions!

It is easy to relax and just drift through the narrow streets of Essaouria. Other than in Marrakech, there are no scooters in the medina, just the porters with their carts and people on foot. Everything is a bit more laid back, and we enjoyed part of New Year's Day morning sitting among some of the local men sipping mint tea and watching the world pass by. (Women do not sit in cafés with their friends for a friendly espresso or mint tea.) For dinner, the first night we enjoyed a shrimp and scampi tajine, and the second night we splurged a bit more and had grilled monkfish and Saint-Pierre (called in English John Dory), accompanied by a bottle of local wine.

Huge, I mean HUGE chicken legs!

So you won't use up precious braincells:
Sand patterns on Essaouria's long and wide beach

After two nights it was time to leave the coast and head back toward Marrakech and bemoan the fact that there is no ring-road to accommodate through traffic. It became clear that Aziz really doesn't like big cities and their traffic, and so we were all glad when the congestion lessened and we were on our way to the High Atlas, which was looming ahead. Surprisingly, the N9 to Toufliht and the 2,260-meter-high Col du Tichka was newly paved and wide, leading in long serpentines farther and farther into Morocco's highest mountains, the five tallest of which top out at more than 4,000 meters (13,365 feet for Toubkal, the highest point in North Africa).

The road is mostly devoid of large trucks, and the relatively few cars, mini-buses, and other local vehicles drive with care and without hurry. We were surprised to see probably a dozen long-distance cyclo-tourists braving this mountainous road as there are few services, some of the grades are very steep, and the temperature—especially in the shade—was fairly nippy. I had to think of my tour through Albania where despite not even lugging all my crap around I had been seriously challenged, and so I caught myself shedding a few secret tears thinking about how advanced age has made certain endeavors either impossible for me or at least a fool's errand. Chapeau to those intrepid souls on that road!

The views of the snow-covered peaks and the deep, green valleys, against the cobalt blue sky, were spectacular. Being on a private tour gives us the privilege to ask Aziz to stop for a minute so we can step out of the car, stretch out while admiring the vistas, and take a few photos. That's why we had spent the significantly higher fee, but the thought of having to sit in a minivan with another 18 tourists for two weeks had been unbearable for both Birgit and me, and so we had hired Atlas Desert Tours to custom-design a trip to fit our schedules and druthers. Good choice!

It was in the late afternoon that we drove by the world's largest movie studio in Ouarzazate, Atlas Film Studios. Probably the best-known movie shot here was Lawrence of Arabia, but others such as Mummy and Gladiator were also filmed on location. Well, we arrived a bit late for a guided tour, but since I had been to Universal Studios in both California and Florida years ago I didn't feel too disadvantaged. Birgit, for her part, was feeling like crap with a persistent dry cough that she had not been able to shake since her arrival from Germany, damping the mood in the car.

And so we checked into our second hotel of this tour, the Riad Tama, on the outskirts of Ouarzazate. What it lacked in modern amenities that the Casa.b Mogador had excelled in, it made up with traditional charm and Arabic decor touches that were spanning at least the past 75 years. Of course, just as anywhere else, check-in required sitting down and sharing mint tea and sweets. I'm really starting to like that! I just wish I could find plentiful and cheap mint in Lubbock!

When we stepped out of our cozy room we overlooked some of the irrigated fields that surrounded the town; evening was approaching quickly, the temperature dropped, and before we knew it we were in the comfortable dining room where we enjoyed dinner with a few other guests. Tajine is de rigeur in Morocco, and if you can put it into a clay pot, that's where it will come out of. The fascinating thing is that every tajine tastes differently, with the variations lying with the spices and other minor ingredients involved. I have decided to buy a cast iron/enamel tajine when I get back to the US (it doesn't make sense to take a fragile clay pot along) and start experimenting with new dishes.

Moon, Venus, and some other heavenly flotsam if you looked closely

The next morning we were off for a relatively short drive of less than 100 miles to the Dades Gorge east of Ouarzatate. On the way we visited the kasbah of Amridil, one of more than 150 of such small fortresses in the oasis of Skoura. Of this number, about a handful are still operational, meaning that they are still housing locals who live with their families in these small citadels and go about their farming life. We had a local guide who himself had grown up in one of these kasbahs, and he explained to us daily life, the spatial arrangement of the mini-fort, and the challenges that their citizens faced. We learned that a kasbah with four towers does not have any toilets inside of its walls, yet a kasbah with five towers provides facilities for women, in said fifth tower. We learned how the mud walls are built with wooden forms, one layer on top of the other, with wooden pegs being used like scaffolds to go up higher and higher (and leaving holes in the walls, something I had been wondering about all along). 

After lunch (chicken tajine) we drove on and soon the landscape changed form oasis-flat to once again mountainous. After turning north at Boulmane we entered an area called the Monkey Fingers, curious rock formations that glowed red in the late afternoon sun. The Dades valley became more and more narrow until the road finally climbed in steep serpentines to a lookout point from where we looked into the gorge that we had just driven through and where we would spend the night. 

Our riad, comfortable and warm, had a view of the irrigated gardens around us, and before it became too late Birgit and I took a walk along the valley floor, saying hello to the local urchins and enjoying the splendor of the steep slopes in the setting sun. We finished our two-mile walk just when things really started to cool down, dropping the temperature almost into freezing range. It was time to have a superb dinner in the Dar Rihana Dades' restaurant, which was included in our tour, as was dinner in all riads where we were too far away from any restaurants that we could have paid for privately.

In steep valleys, the sun doesn't reach the floor until late, and by then we had already had breakfast and the luggage was in the Land Rover. Aziz told us that we could take a one-mile walk through the steepest and most narrow part of the gorge, and despite Birgit's increasingly uncomfortable cough we decided to join the many dozens of other tourists. Oh dang, it was cold, especially since the wind gave us a demonstration of the Bernoulli Effect! Without sun and simply walking on the asphalt next to the (currently) benign Dades stream we couldn't get back to the car fast enough.

The goal for this—our fifth—day on the road was a camel camp on the cusp of the dunes of the Sahara. Quite frankly, it was a long drive that turned from spectacular mountain scenery to more sublime dry, rolling terrain. To me, this landscape looked extremely familiar. Drive southwest of Lubbock into the Permian Basin and the trans-Pecos, visit Big Bend, or get lost in the Chihuahuan desert, and you will be reminded time and again that landscapes repeat themselves. The sparseness of vegetation was the same, and the wide open spaces, devoid of habitations, were oddly comforting. I enjoyed the drive. Somehow, I felt home.

Our stop at a fossil shop was a total dud; when we had read about it in the tour description we thought we might visit an archeological dig, or similar. That was the first time that I had to tell Aziz that this stop, which was clearly meant to entice us to purchase geodes and ammonites, needed to be removed from the tour, and instead we should have had an opportunity to explore the foggaras khetara karim, just a few miles from Aziz's hometown of Arfoud. Had I not happened to ask a question about round, well-like structures next to the road we might have never learned about this ancient irrigation system. Of course, I had heard about artesian wells (think of the New Mexico town of Artesia that is named for this type of water source) but obviously had no clue how these intricate khetara systems work. In a nutshell, underground channels up to almost 10 miles long run from an aquifer toward a place where the water can egress, with vertical shafts dug from the surface to the channel; these shafts allow rainwater to find its way down to the channel, while at the same time humidity and night/day temperature differentials draw moisture out of the atmosphere, eventually converting molecules into water droplets. This short YouTube clip explains the principle much better than I can.

These khataras are no longer functional and in disrepair

Fascinating, and definitely a point where Atlas Desert Tours could do so much better! In some areas the entries to the khatara shafts are made of stone, in others the earth has simply been dug up and piled up. Aziz was obviously worried that my weight might break one of the ancient canal ceilings and told me to stay away from the edge of the shafts. Later, we would see more khataras in Hassilabied when we visited an oasis and saw a well where the locals filled water containers.

We arrived at the Dunes Luxury Camp just in time to enjoy the welcome tea and freshen up in our truly deluxe tent before it was time for our camel ride into the sand dunes to catch the sunset. Together with two other couples, each group accompanied by a camel wrangler, we met our dromedaries and were instructed on how to mount the saddle, hold on to the small handle in front of us, and be prepared for the beast to rise up—rear legs first, then, in an unelegant and unexpected move, the front legs as well. Riding a camel up and down dunes is a bit like sitting in a four-wheel drive vehicle on a badly rutted road and getting tossed around, without a seatbelt. Thank goodness for that handle! But after a while you get the hang of it and start anticipating the next barrel-roll and counteract it with a slight shift to the right or the left or the front or the rear. Still, I doubt I want to try bull-riding anytime soon.

With the sun slowly dipping toward the western horizon we plodded up a number of sinuous dunes until the guides deemed that the spot was right for everyone to disembark. A camel kneeling and coming to rest on its belly is just as unnatural of a move as the giddy-up maneuver, but none of us went helter-skelter over the bar.

We probably spent about an hour or so frolicking in the sand, which is almost as fine as powdered sugar. Unlike sand on the beach, it doesn't stick and simply falls off your hands when you scoop up a handful and open your fingers. With all the footprints and four-wheeler tracks, the dunes were not as pristine as a photographer might wish for them to be, but that's the price of tourism; at least at that time no dune buggies were in the immediate vicinity, although we did hear the occasional engine whining during what is called "dune bashing," an activity touted as "having fun in the solitude and calm of the dunes." Yeah, right.

Once the sun had kissed the faraway horizon it was time to remount the camels and head back to camp. After dinner, five of the six guests proceeded to the camp's fire pit; Birgit excused herself as she continued to feel like crap with whatever ailed her. The young fellows who were running the camp soon came to the fire, warmed up clay drums without singeing the taught leather drumheads, and softly started to make music. Before long, Aziz also showed up and grabbed a drum, and eventually seven young Berbers clad in jalabas and other traditional attire were drumming up a storm. It was obvious that this was not just a show for us tourists but that these young men celebrated their heritage and were happy to share it with us.

The evening ended when one after the other of the ensemble called it a night and we, the guests, had to fill in for them. Since our drumming wasn't too evolved we turned to the ever-so-popular Arab riddles, with brain teasers such as this: What are the three steps to putting a camel into a refrigerator? Open the door, shove the camel inside, and close the door. It gets better: What are the four steps to putting an elephant in the refrigerator? Open the door, pull out the camel, shove the elephant inside, and close the door. Oh dear ....

On our second day on the fringes of the Sahara, Aziz drove with us through the reg areas, the flat, barren and rocky windswept areas that are not erg, or sand dunes. That's where the nomads make their winter camps before moving back into the Atlas mountains for the summer. We stopped by a nomad tent where we were offered tea, sat on pillows in the low tent that seemed to be held together more by ropes and rags than solid pieces of fabric, and watched the children play with plastic crates, building a little train in their innocent ways. We were served the tea and some peanuts by the woman while the man, according to Aziz, was most likely tending to his livestock or carrying water from a faraway well. Not an easy life. I left the woman with a generous tip for the tea.

Maybe five or six miles away lies the small hamlet of Khamlia, which has been home to a group of black Africans from the south who call themselves Gnaoua. Over the past few centuries they have integrated themselves with the Berber yet are proudly independent. They continue their ancient traditions, and in Khamlia (which as a small town was founded just about 60 or 70 years ago) both live harmoniously together. The Gnaoua music is celebrated during an annual festival, the sadaka (which means "religious offering"). Just as you can listen in New Orleans to traditional jazz in the Preservation Hall, so can you listen to the Les Pigeons du Sable (the Desert Pigeons, as they call themselves) in Khamlia. Tourism keeps traditions alive, and so maybe there's a good side to what we cause through our curiosity.

Before we checked into the Riad Madu close to Hassilabied, Aziz showed us how an oasis works. The land is owned in small plots by individuals from the nearby town, and water is distributed by means of small irrigation channels that are opened and closed according to a communal schedule. (The water arrives via the aforementioned khataras.) Thanks to flood irrigation, dates, beans, cabbage, alfalfa, mint, and all kind of veggies are grown, to be traded with the nomads for meat, hides, and firewood. It appears that not the entire Hassilabied community has access to tap water since children were busy filling plastic containers with water from the well and wheeling those loads via hand carts into town.

The Riad Madu was located on the outskirts of town, overlooking the erg. Birgit decided to take it easy and just sit in the sun while I went for a long walk into the dunes, well equipped with water and warm clothes. Small rises and tops of smaller dunes appear deceptively close, but walking is strenuous and one often has to detour since a dune proves too steep to scale. There really was no danger of my getting lost (not only thanks to the many camel and dune buggy tracks but also because the town was always within view to the west), but it did feel very quiet and peaceful out there, all by myself.

I didn't even try to clamber up the tallest of the dunes, which later in the afternoon attracted camel trains loaded with tourists; I was content with plodding along at a sustainable pace, enjoying the solitude. I noticed some odd tracks in the sand that looked as if a centipede had made its way through the sand, and so I decided to investigate. Without cell phone service I had to wait until later to identify the ugly looking insect that had left these tracks: Hyalomma Dromedarii was the source, blood-bloated camel ticks that had had their fill, dropped off their hosts after gorging themselves, and were on the way to finding a safe spot to digest!

Camel dung is surprisingly small and, all dried out, weighs next to nothing.
I didn't taste it, so no report there.

On the way back I once again walked by the oasis and sat down to watch the comings and goings around the well. It's a tough life out here, but the children are still children, giggling and grinning and skipping around the way only children can. A group of little girls was totally oblivious to my presence while attempting to keep their little feet dry, fording a small rivulet by means of some stepping stones. Later, sipping yet another tea in Hassilabied's only "café," I had to think back of all those trips to San Carlos and beyond in Mexico. Progress comes slowly in some places, and maybe that's a good thing.

We closed out our time on the edge of the desert with another delicious dinner, in the Madu. Birgit was feeling bad enough that she had used her afternoon to make a plane reservation from Fes back to Germany in less than 48 hours, and that certainly put a damper on everything. At least she did get to see the amazing diversity that Morocco has to offer, from the Atlantic via the High Atlas to the Sahara, and I can only hope that she will carry more positive memories of this trip with her than the disappointment that her illness must have caused.

The evening presented about the halfway point of our trip through Morocco, and I am sorry that not everything went according to plan. Sometimes we break a hip, and sometimes we have a cough—the choices are not always ours to make. I'll keep my head high for the remainder of my time in this beautifully diverse country and am sure that many more memories will come my way.

Jürgen