Wow! What a day! A little bit of a shaky start when the tour of the gorges D arranged with our 'guide' was looking decidedly suspect (several guide changes and very hazy details of what we would be visiting) but he turned up trumps when he arranged for a real guide, Hamou to take us round the Gorges. What a dude, slim, fit, friendly, so knowledgeable and for the same price as our faux guide. After sorting out what tour we were after in his little office we packed into a grande taxi (literally – seven in a car meant for five) and headed up to the second of the three gorges (we were walking down to the first and the third was too far away for us to visit in one day). Our walk started at 10 am, 27km away from the little town we were staying in and lasted until 6/7ish.
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| From Gorges du Dadès, Morocco |
We started off on the road, impressed by the magnificence of the second gorge – we only saw a little of it but it was huge, we walked down for a few minutes before turning off onto a dirt road and from there we were balancing on the little ledges surrounding the plots of farmland on the riverbed, scrambling through bushes and trees, climbing over the monkey fingers, wading through the river, jumping over the little canals which irrigated the crops and taking dips to cool down - just your average Indiana Jones'esque day, we were blissfully, childishly, pigs in shit happy.
Hamou pointed out different trees, flowers and crops, it was the first time I'd seen an almond tree, a walnut tree or a pomegranate tree and it was all amazing. We passed by some cascades which fed the river and climbed up for an amazing view out over the valley.
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| From Gorges du Dadès, Morocco |
Another part of our tour took us through an old Kasbah which I think was still inhabited but only a few people, it was impressive – all built from mud and stones, immediately after the Kasbah were the monkey fingers or brain of the Atlas mountains, incredible.
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| From Gorges du Dadès, Morocco |
We weren't able to walk through the first Gorge because the current was too strong but D climbed down to have a look and confirmed that it was beautiful but impassable so we headed a different way home. We made it to a small hotel in the Gorge which we had planned on staying in, and waited there for a grand taxi to take us back into Boulmaine des Dades were we thanked Hamou for his amazing tour and got the next bus out of town – onward to Todra Gorge. We arrived at Tinghir (staging point for trips to Todra Gorge) less than an hour later (love the short bus trips).
By this point the day had well and truly started to take it's toll on me and I was flaking out big style, we sorted ourselves out with a couple of terrace mattresses after a very friendly guy called Majid, asked if we needed a place to stay, we dumped our bags and the three of us headed out to find some dinner. I was so tired I could barely walk let alone help make a decision about where or what we should eat, it was all I could do to keep my eyes open to chow down some chips and a salad before thanking Majid and going to sleep on the terrace in our thousand star hotel.
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