Road of Tajines_4

2008.10.08

At 08:00, our guide came to pick us up at Hotel Royale. About 45 years of age, our guide AS is very talkative and knowledgeable. We hopped onto his 4x4 and started off our day excursion at our first stop at the kasbah of Ouarzazate. Then we headed east out of the city. Rugged terrains along both sides of the highway. The rocky plateaus, suggested by AS, are renmants of prehistoric era when Morocco was pretty much under the sea. Pointed at a number of refurbished kasbahs, AS told us that many of these ancient mansions are owned by wealthy Europeans, while the rest were owned by local restaurant and hotel keepers who turn the traditional castles into tourist commodities. High mud walls and traditional motifs, these kasbahs now cost roughly 100,000 to 200,000 euros each.

AS began to talk about his company, Ksour Voyages. Owned by a Moroccan and his Japanese wife, Ksour Voyages has good reputation in Ouarzazate, and even aboard, especially in Japan where the Japanese co-owner has written guidebooks about Morocco. Culture, history, geography and then of course, politics, AS was never tired of speaking out his opinions. We discussed about certain political issues, mainly on the conflict between Islamic and the Western worlds. We spoke of George W Bush, Gaddafi, Mugabe, and so on. It was a pleasant talk.

We drove through the oasis of Skoura, a village in a river basin filled with palm and olive trees. Under the shade of thousands of palm trees, mud houses and patches of crop gardens dotted along a labyrinth of narrow streets. Dades Valley, a long and lush-green area along Dades River, was picturesque in the sense that the thriving energy of life from farming villages and palm clusters on the context of barren land reveals nothing but beauty of nature (a). As our 4x4 winded through hills and plateaus, vistas of small Berber villages and farming terraces unfolded after each bend we made. From afar, the mere mud colour of the village houses may suggest a quality of ruins, yet the lush-green crops, palms and olive trees along the river banks reveal the true richness of the region, that is, water.

At about 13:30, we arrived at Todra Gorge, one of the most important tourist attraction in Central Morocco. We had lunch at one of the two restaurants in the gorge, had a short walk in the canyon, where rock cliffs rise to about 150m at both sides, and returned to our 4x4. AS drove us deeper into the gorge for about 15 minutes, on a bumpy road along a tiny glacier stream (b). We passed by a packed minibus with local Berbers heading back to the village deep in the mountains.

We back tracked as we headed back to Ouarzazate. Everyone of us fell asleep in the return journey. With his sunglasses on, AS quietly brought us back to Hotel Royale, after almost 4 hours of driving. Even today I felt really grateful to AS.