Morocco - Desert

We spent a few days driving,out to the desert. We visited a casbah, which was an ext need fortress where a family used to keep animals within an amazing utter wall over night to protect them from predators - both human and animal. This casbah dated from around the year 1200, and was part of a chain along a series of oases that formed a caravan route from the Sahara. 

The Moroccan roads over the high Atlas Mountains were very impressive. 

And so were some of the gorges that sliced through the mountains. 

The Todra gorge is the centre of climbing in Morocco. Pretty cool limestone!

We rode on camals for an hour to stay at a camp in the desert. I will NEVER be a big fan of riding camals! Their gait is oddly jolting and they are so wide that they hurt your legs. 

However, it was super cool to spend a night out in the desert. 

Morocco - Atlas Mountains

It doesn't rain often in Morocco, but it is pretty cold and miserable when it does!

The High Atlas Mountains are pretty rugged and beautiful. We did a four day trek supported by a cook with a mule. 

Being supported meant that we only carried day packs, and the cook made all of our meals. Pretty luxurious!

The high light of the trip was the ascent of the highest mountain in Northern Africa, mount Toubkal at 4137m / 13,652'. 

It was a pretty easy mountain technically, but we did need crampons near the top. We were the last group to leave the hut, and the first group to summit! Not bad for a couple nearly middle aged Canadians. 

Off to the Sahara desert next!

Morocco - Marrakech

I have always wanted to go to Marrakech. It just sounded so cool, so different, so exotic. The real thing did not fail to impress. It is such a wild mixture of the old and new. 

Five hundred year old buildings topped with satellite dishes. 

Men in traditional robes that have not changed in centuries. But the shades are new!

Who has the right of way when a pedestrian, a bicycle, a motorbike, a taxi and a bus all run into  a donkey cart?

One of the biggest surprises we had was the Majorelle Gardens, which were originally created around 1920 by a French artist and later restored by Yves St. Laurent. 

Neither of us are really big "garden" people, but the cactus collection there was amazing!

We stayed in a Riad, which was a converted family home centred around a court yard and a small swimming pool. It was down three back alleys from the souk (market place) in this picture. One of the Riad staff met us where our car dropped us off to lead us to the Riad, because we would have never found it on our own. The owners do not know how old their building is - it might date from the mid 1899's but the street in the picture above has 500 year old buildings and was originally laid out 800 years ago. 

Our dinner one night was a beef Tangia - beef and spices cooked all day in a clay pot in a local hammam ( public pool / bathing / massage facility). The guys who run the furnaces make a couple of extra bucks by cooking this stuff up. The owner of our Riad sent his neighbour (pictured above) to pick up the dinner. 

Which was exceptionally delicious! We also took advantage of a private hammam inside our Riad. Steve had a male masseuse; Jackie had a female one. In either case, they wash you, scrub your body, wrap you in clay, wash you again and then do a local form is stretching massage called Iqubal - kind of like partner yoga paired up with a few Cirque du Soleil moves!

We both really enjoyed the El Fna square,which is a full on market, food court and circus. " El Fna" is roughly translated as Assembly of the Dead or Mosque of the Invisible. The snake charmers were charming, the music was bizarre, and we were convinced that most of the veiled belly dancers were men. 

Yup, lots of really impressive old buildings too!

next we are off to the Atlas Mountains.