okay team, this keyboard blows, so this may be short.
After the dunes, it was time for some other desert scenery. Mike and I headed to the TODRA GORGE. A 1000 foot deep canyon that's 60 feet wide... with two hotels squeezed in next to the river and the one lane road. Yep, leave it to Morocco to take advantage of every single awesome place to put a hotel. But keeping with the tradition of the trip. No tourists. In some places, no people. Just empty buildings and strangely desolate towns.
After one of the most awkward moments of my life, where we moved from a hotel just outside the narrow gorge to a hotel inside the gorge, we were in the middle of it. (What happened, is that after a taxi ride of 200 plus kilometers for just me and Mike, we got dropped at the hotel right outside the gorge. awesome views. nice spot. Well, we took our rooms, and went for a hike before it got dark, so we hadn't paid yet. we walked through the gorge, saw the Yasmina hotel in the gorge and thought it would be WAY expensive. It was really nice. Surely 100 usd a night. We ask... it's 200 dirham. That's 25 bucks. including dinner and breakfast. Um...sweet. So we went to get our bags, and boy that was awkward, because the poor guy at the other hotel had no other guests. we gave him 20 dirham just because we'd been there, but it was horribly awkward, and frankly a dick move on our part. If I could do it again, I'd stay at his place one night, then move for a second night. Anyway, can't always be perfect...and my room the first night, had a fricking tree blocking the view of the gorge. That my friends, is karma).
We hiked a 6 plus mile loop around the gorge the next day. saw locals with camels heading to market or hearding sheep. we explored a broken, ruined kasbah when we returned to the valley. We rocked it. For those who don't know (Like me before this trip), a Kasbah is one of those classic mudbrick structures that was built to house a family, or families and were usually built for defense too. YOu've seen them in just about any movie starring the arabic world. This one was lived in, but also part abandoned (and part was build out of cement too, which was odd). It was cool.
The next day it rained, so my plans for rock climbing were dashed. But you just roll with it, and we headed on via various grand taxi's and buses to DADES GORGE, and took a 3 hour car ride through it. Took lots of pictures. Crazy hotels and Kasbah's built on cliffs, rock towers. It's really cool. We explored a really ruined one, that was crumbling and about to fall apart. Somehow I climbed up on top of it. Its so strange. Some are 100 years old. Some are 500 years old. Who knows when this was built.
The sun was going down as we rode the bus to SKOURA OASIS. The number of Kasbah and Ksour (that's walled city on a hilltop) was amazing. It was so beautiful in the low sun after the rainy morning. In Skoura we got off the bus and a guy named, you guessed it, Mohammed, who owns a Kasbah guest house asked if we wanted to stay at his. We went for it and it was AWESOME! Staying in a 150 year old mudbrick building with 2 foot thick walls. It's been modernized, with showers and electricity and it seems like plaster on the inside walls. But it's really cool. His family has lived there for generations. It was originally 4 families. They live in the towers and work and eat in the center areas. That's what Kasbah's were for. And every tower indicated the number of families.
Today we explored the Oasis. 1000s of palm trees. Kasbahs all over. I rode a bike all around, and was DEEP in the oasis. It wasn't what I imagined an oasis to be like. It's surrounded by the desert, with the snow capped High Atlas to the north. But it was much bigger than I thought they would be. And as I rode deep in, the locals looked confused about a tourist back there, but were also very friendly.
Which brings me to the fact that once I got away from Fez, EVERY SINGLE MOROCCAN has been AWESOME! I'm serious. So nice, friendly. Even if they want to sell you something, they are cool. The courtousy is amazing. The people who work at the hotels:
Ali in the desert and his staff. Mohammed, our camel guide. Youness and Rachid, the guides in Azrou. The staff at Yasmina, Mohammed (yep) and Youness (a different one) as well as the Matre'D / Owner who's name I never got. And now Mohammed (again) the Kasbah owner. All so friendly and nice. And not just in the "You're the client so I'm going to kiss your butt" way that happens in bigger hotels or in America and Europe. Or especially in LA. But generally NICE. They're friendly, engaged. And so great to learn about Morocco and what life is like. Ishallah ("God Willing") everyone will be lucky enough to meet folks like this when they travel. We played Guillotine and Uno with Mohammed at Yasmina. Mohammed (at the Kasbah) shared food from his garden and even let us take his moped into town to goto the internet last night. Really? Cool.
Due to the fact that there are no tourists. Well, not exactly NONE, but...yes, pretty much none. It's been cool, because I get to really meet Moroccans. And because many of the guest houses are family affairs, or often you are sleeping in their house. Yep, in their house. (Which was very bizarre to me at the beginning of this trip, but now is very comfortable and wonderfully cool). You get to know people on a different level from just being someone that works at the front desk of a hotel. It's really neat. Weird at first, yes, but ultimately good.
It's been cool to see that the touts and confrontation of Fez were very limited. Now granted, I'm about to goto Marrakech to finish this trip out ,and I might get my mind blown. But I think I'm ready for it.
Tonight, I'm in Ouazazarte (war-zazat), the gateway to the desert. Only I'm heading up and over hte mountains to Marrakech on Monday (my birthday, wooo!). Tomorrow... Movie stuido and Ait Baggadou (which has been in dozens of movies). Oh, the big Kasbah I saw today in the oasis was in "Hanna", "Nazareth", and a lot of other movies too.
OH... and in Ouarzazarte there's one other thing of note.
TOURISTS.
LOTS OF THEM.
(Well, compared to the rest of the trip). Mike and I point them out and go "ooh, look, another!". It really is bizarre. We saw more in 20 minutes than the rest of the trip all together. (At the Todra gorge, in a hotel of 70 rooms. It was he, I, and a german couple. That's it. Oh, and the power only worked when the generator ran at night. I love it!).
Who knows, maybe I'll make some new tourist friends... or maybe I'll just stick to the Moroccans.
Ishallah.
CraigO
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