After coming back from the Sahara and having our breakfast at the Mohammed's house in Hassilabied we headed back to central Morocco and to the High Atlas. On the way to Ouarzazate, we planned stopping at the two Morocco's stunning canyons: Todra (Todgha) and Dades. We needed to drive about 3 hours before reaching the first gorge.
Even at a distance from Merzouga we could still see the nomad tents along the road.
Further away, the small towns re-appeared again, and despite early hours, people were already out on the streets, going about their day-to-day business.
It's always funny to see how some people use donkeys as transportation, while others drive expensive modern vehicles... :-)
Most of the towns in this part of Morocco have just one main street going through the town with houses lined up on both sides.
As we drove further, the landscape along the way was slowly changing back from shrub-steppe to hills and mountains.
A couple of hours later we drove into Tinghir.
In order to get to the first canyon, the Todgha gorge in our case, we needed to drive to the other side of town where the river comes out into the valley. Just as we were crossing it, we saw a crowd of women washing their clothes right there in the river. I asked Dima to stop, so that I can make a photo. One of the women, noticing me taking some pics, started to scream at us in French and moved in our direction. We got out of there fast, before she could do something to the car or to us. This was the first and only time we got such an aggressive reaction for making a photo.
As we drove further up hill, at some point we were able to see the town from a viewing point. The red mud houses forming the town created a feeling that we were on a film set of an old SiFi movie with some Arabic décor.
Occasional lashes of green palm trees between everything else being red formed incredibly surreal scenery.
It took a while to get to the canyons with the narrow road finding it's way among the red mountain slopes.
Both the Todgha and neighboring Dades rivers have carved out cliff-sided canyons on their final 40 kilometers stretch through the mountains. The difference between the two is that in Todgha gorge the road is going on the bottom of the canyon, while in the Dades gorge, it goes alongside the canyon's wall. The last 600 meters of the Todgha gorge are the most spectacular. Here the canyon narrows to a flat stony track, in places as little as 10 meters wide, with sheer and smooth rock walls up to 160 meters high on each side.
Despite the fact the canyon is some kind of protected heritage site, the river is still being used for the laundry purposes.:-)
The Dades gorge is just about an hour away, if you go back to Tinghir, and take the N10. Alternatively, the maps show the possibility to drive through the mountains from one gorge to the other (see the blue route on the photo below), making it probably a much more interesting drive. However, we were not sure what kind of road to expect, as in Morocco some mountain roads might be only suitable for 4x4. We decided not to risk it and took the usual N10 road instead.
The mountains here are formed with a very weird looking rock formations.
Even at a distance from Merzouga we could still see the nomad tents along the road.
There are not many inhabited places between the two canyons and driving through the empty plains created a distinct feeling that you are in "no man's" land.
Once at Boumalne Dades town, we took the road which goes alongside the Dades gorge.
As the road started to clime upwards, the views became incredible.
Just as we were going up a very steep mountain, it started to rain and the road became slippery.
Dima said that he is concerned about driving further into the mountains, as our tires were quite worn, so we turned back, and came across a Kasbah that was hiding behind one of the mountains.
Altogether we drove about 35km into the gorge. Soon after we turned back and were driving towards the road to Ouarzazate, the rain stopped and we saw a rainbow just above the canyon.
We were not disappointed with our choice, as the road from Tinghir along Dades Gorge and all the way further to Ouarzazate is also known as "the road of thousand Kasbbah", a must see when visiting Morocco.
The rest of the drive to Ouarzazate was not as spectacular as driving through the gorges, but still a very beautiful one.
When we arrived to the town, our GPS refused to find the address of the hotel we booked. Having seen the hotel's location on Google maps when choosing it, I took a chance by just poking a finger in some place on the GPS map that I thought looked similar to the one I remembered. Imagine our surprise, when it turned out that I was off by just about 100 meters :-)
The hotel was about 5-7 min drive from the old part of town. We dropped our bags off in the room and went out for dinner. From what we saw Ouarzazate is not really a very interesting town, especially when you've already been to Fes, Marrakesh, etc. We walked around trying to choose a place to it but most of them were suspiciously empty. Finally, we found one that had customers, including tourist and ordered a couple of tajines and kebab. Disappointingly, both were the worst ones we had in Morocco.
We were tired after having to wake up at 5 am and driving all day, so understandably we skipped the evening walk and went back to the hotel to sleep.
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