As I mentioned before, our itinerary included something like 4 days that were very full of driving during our week in Morocco. Normally, I would consider it very undesirable to spend so much of a vacation on the road, but it worked out well for a number of reasons. First, we were not doing the driving, Ibrahim was, so the normal stress associated with driving and navigating in a foreign country was eliminated. Second, we were in a decent-sized van with comfortable seats, so we were not cramped. Third, we got to stay in a number of interesting and quite varied hotels/camps. Fourth, we got to see so much of Morocco, from mountain passes to gorges, from sand dunes to oases, from ancient cities to modern resorts to tiny villages to abandoned fortresses. Mohamed and Ibrahim planned our itinerary to include beautiful roads and so many interesting stops along the way.
Some pictures from the Atlas Mountains:
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| Nomad caravan |
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| A gorge popular with rock climbers |
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| You can see rock climbers if you look carefully |
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| A scarf vendor near the mouth of the gorge |
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| A very windy road we drove up |
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| Just a pretty mountain |
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| View of Dades Valley from our hotel at dusk |
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| Abandoned and decaying casbah in a valley |
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| We toured this casbah. It is very picturesque, so, not surprisingly, many movies and TV series have been filmed here, including Gladiator, Lawrence of Arabia, and Game of Thrones. |
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| A view from the top |
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| Another casbah that has been turned into something like a living museum, like Sturbridge Village. |
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| Here is its exterior |
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| The largest palm plantation in Morocco |
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| We stopped for a concert in a small town of former slaves from sub-Saharan Africa. (Slavery existed in Morocco until about 50 years ago.) |
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| A parking lot for pack animals at a regional market |
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| A delicious meal served to us at our guide's mother's home---Berber "pizza," peanuts, dates, and zmita, a mixture of roasted flour, nuts, spices, and sugar. |
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