Louisa: The last few days of our road trip were spent enjoying more dramatic scenery on the southern side of the High Atlas. The highlights of this were the Dades Gorge and Valley of the Roses.
The Dades Gorge is just west of the Todra Gorge and cuts deeply into the mountains. If you go far enough there are rough tracks (called piste) which you can drive along that connect the gorges. We tried to go on some of these but our bike is just too big for it and our tires aren’t rugged enough for it. So we just stuck to the normal tarmac roads (much to my pleasure!).
Eric: I’d like to add that some of the highlights were the people we met and the lunch we had in M’semir! The road through and past the Dades Gorge to M’semir was tough. How tough? Switchbacks on less than ideal roads without barriers tough! Oh and then there was the high pass (not mountain high, mind you, but still 1800+ meters high) where the road was reduced to 1 vehicle width due to erosion… Still no barrier! My nerves were most definitely shot by the time we got to M’semir. Once there and once finding the eastern-entry point to the MH3 (Piste to Tamtetouche in the Todra Gorge) we settled down for lunch in a very relaxing spot. The restaurant had a huge garden in front of the lounging benches and we had a very satisfying lunch of berbere omelette (saffron and cumin!) cooked in a tajine. It was just what I needed to recuperate from the adrenaline and cortisol running through my body before doing that ridiculous route again. Did I mention I don’t like heights?
The next highlight of course was our last photo stop (the last photo in the following group) before reaching our Auberge. Louisa and I were standing arm in arm taking in the view and I turned around to the road and there camping spot on the other side to see a specialized truck made for overland travel. It was a smaller version of another we had seen earlier where the container has been turned into a living space. Pretty cool way to travel! The owners of the vehicle spotted us and for some reason used their nice camera to take a picture of use from across the way. Visiting them lead to a fantastic conversation about they’re travels, their vehicle (turns out they did the conversion themselves). A Scotsman who was trekking the area came over as well to join the conversation and we learned quite a bit about the sheep slaughtering festival that will be going on for Eid, also a key tip to get our alcohol before the weekend was over because those parts of the shops close down so as not to tempt the local population during a time of celebration, seriously! Oh and the Swiss couple with the truck gave us almost 1L of wine, amazing! You can checkout their story here at Sahara-team.ch.
Louisa: The next day we went in search of the Valley of the Roses. We had both pictured fields and fields of roses planted in the valleys with the flowers in full bloom. Unfortunately we could not have been more wrong. First off, the flower harvest is in May so our timing was off by almost 6 months, and secondly the roses are planted as borders around the fields so they are a secondary crop. It was a fun adventure though to drive up into the hills and to not find any other tourists on the road.
Eric: Yeah this was a surprise for us, while I figured we weren’t going to see a massive bloom of roses I did expect some sort of industrialized operation going on there… nothing of the sort. It’s all local families who produce some amazing rose oil. The gorges here really are something to marvel at, before you reach them you may as well be in a desolate and barren place until suddenly, come around a bend and drop down a bit and you’re skirting around a lush valley filled with life. It’s still not enough to sustain the local population, they do have to import foodstuffs into the area which I was surprised at but I suppose makes sense.
Louisa: We then made our way to the western end of the mountain range to Ait Benhaddou. This is a kasbah that has been preserved and gussied up over the years to be used as a movie set. It has acted as a backdrop for Lawrence of Arabia, Gladiator, Prince of Persia and Game of Thrones (amongst others). It was fun to walk around, though the tourist touts were kind of annoying and ruined the atmosphere a bit for me (I almost felt I was back in Egypt).
Eric: I have to say I was underwhelmed by this place. There were however some shops that I had fun in, especially the last one where I was really engaging the shop keeper into explaining his wares. I got the impression I was getting some fabrication of the history of the items and had a distinct impression that some of his stuff was from the movies that were shot here. In fact, when we arrived outside his shop he told us about how the Gladiator scenes that were made in the slave camp were shot there, how he was an extra, etc.
Louisa: We continued over the Anti-Atlas range towards the coast. Enroute we encountered some strange weather. It felt like we were driving through a cloud on the high plateau.
Eric: You may not know this but Louisa is quite tired and is in relaxation mode (this is a fantastic thing!). She has left out an entire city we stayed in called Talouine in the hopes to finish this blog post quickly, not on my watch! Muha. I have to admit Talouine was pretty non-descript from our perspective. It is a great place to use as a base for hiking if that is your thing, or, if you’re lucky enough to come at the right time to see the lotus blooms and the saffron harvest; we were a week early! However while driving through this region I was reminded of a documentary of the saffron industry in Morocco and then it hit me… we were driving through the very region from the documentary. 1kg of lotus stigmata = $4000, can you imagine how many stigmata you need to get to 1kg?
Eric: Louisa says it “felt” like we were driving through a cloud on the high plateau. As far as I was concerned we were driving through a cloud on the high plateau. I may be wrong of course but I’ve had the pleasure of being in clouds a few times before and I’ve come to associate a different kind of smell to them vs. mist & fog. An interesting and weird happening was when we suddenly would get hit with water… or rather we would drive into a patch of moisture that was either falling or just ready too… it felt like ice almost… little tiny bits of ice hitting my face through my open visor.
Past the cloud we ended up having lunch at a rest-stop attached to a gas station. It was mutton and it was horrible. Though to our surprise a few motorcyclists arrived who we had bumped into up in Fes. A French group that remembered us and with Louisa translating we were all able to commiserate a bit on our experiences so far in Morocco. Quite a treat for me! For the rest of the day we leap-frogged the French group, they passing us on our next break and vice versa.