Majorelle Gardens

Located in a suburb of Marrakech, these gardens were designed by the French painter Jacques Majorelle in the 20s and 30s, and owned by Yves St Laurent until he died in 2008. They are now owned by a Trust. Visually the gardens are very different from any others we’ve seen. Colours are used to blend in with the tropical plants, particularly the blue in the photo above that was supposed to be based on the colour of French agricultural workers overalls. It sounds naff, but is effective.

There are groups of wonderful specimens and here we are looking at cacti (without speculating on the unusual shapes). The next group below is palm trees with oleanders and the usual, unusual blue pots. The tending of the gardens is immaculate, not a leaf out of place, which is in striking contrast to the maintenance of other exhibits in Marrakech.

Altogether a most stimulating experience.

Day Trip to Imlil

Imlil is a Berber village in the High Atlas 90 minutes drive from Marrakech. It is a trekking and climbing base, even skiing at this time of the year, being at the foot of the highest mountain in North Africa, Djebel Toubcal. In the photo above, Toubcal is the peak on the horizon, just to the right of centre, behind Jane and me. Many of the trekkers and skiers have their luggage taken up higher by mule, and trains of these animals plodded past all the time we were there, some also bearing trippers, the mountain equivalent of our camel ride. The mules have the same air of resignation to their fate as the camels.


Berber villages in this region seem to blend into the countryside, being made of the local mud mix and stone. The buildings are flat topped with a final covering of turf. They are eco-dwellings without the builders even realising it (or caring, probably).

We walked a little way up from the village to the waterfall, coming across patches of snow the biggest of which covered this flat area. Trish and Jane are carefully making their way across it. The waterfall was difficult to get close to and not spectacular but the setting was beautiful.

March 13th to 19th: Marrakech

This is one of the two main symbols of Marrakech, the Koutoubia Minaret, part of a 12th century, beautifully proportioned mosque. It hovers over that other symbol, the Djemma El Fna square, full of performers like acrobats, healers, African bands, snake charmers and numerous hustlers.


Leading northwards off the square are the souks: every kind of market activity imaginable. This is the kingdom of the hard sell and you are likely to be dragged into an emporium and come out with an overpriced purchase you had previously decided you definitely wouldn’t be buying. I mean, where in a caravan can you display 6 ornamental camels, and badly made ones at that.
These people are experts and no one is immune, including us hard-nuts as we thought we were. A helpful lad showed us to an area where the dyers worked, as it so happened right next door to his brother’s herbalist shop, and would we mind popping in just to look - that’s a favourite, that one. The brother was knowledgeable and charming, and we all bought remedies for ailments we hadn’t got but were sure we had at the time. My ointment would certainly cure trench feet- if only I had been at the front in the First World War. All part of the fun! Back in the souk, maybe the genies in these lamps sneak out as you brush past and addle your brain.

The city has some interesting museums, beautifully decorated as for example these pillars from the Marrakech Museum, formerly a palace. Historical buildings and museums here generally don’t contain the number of exhibits as the in the UK, and the standard of presentation and description is nowhere near as professional. There again, entrance charges are often just 10 dirhams (80p), so you can’t expect too much.

All the palaces we visited had many beautiful and intricate ceilings. The following example looks like a carpet, but is carved and coloured wood suspended 20 feet in the air. I’m never sure why so much effort and expense was expended in creating these works of art, as the ceilings are always high and dark. The best viewing position would be lying flat on the floor with a high power torch.

Marrakech is Morocco, but an extreme version of it, and is better visited after being in the country for a while to accustom yourself to the sights, sounds and selling conventions, but that's not a foolproof strategy by any means. Any offers for 6 "superbly crafted" camels and a jar of foot rot cream?

March 12th: Crossing the Atlas to Marrakech

It rained heavily the day before we left Ouarzazate, and the night before that. We were pleased we hadn’t planned to leave a day early, which we had talked about, when, on the morning of our departure, the Atlas range came into view on the outskirts of Ouarzazate. It was blanketed with snow reaching down to a much lower level than we had noticed a few days previously. We would have been travelling much of the way in a blizzard!

As it was, it was a beautiful day and we soon reached the snow line but the road itself was completely clear of snow and ice. We continued to climb and reached the police barrier that allows vehicles over the final section if the road is open. Thankfully it was, and at the highest point, 7400 feet, the snow was about a foot deep on the verges. The views, all the way up and down the other side, were superb. From the foot of the mountains, Marrakech was then only an hour’s drive across a totally flat plain.

March 10th: Dadès Gorge

This dramatic gorge cuts into the Atlas range and is accessible by metalled road for 40 miles, and thereafter tracks which eventually cross the mountains over high level passes. As we had a 2 hour drive to reach the mouth of the gorge, we settled for 30 miles up on tarmac and then retrace our steps so as to get back in daylight.

There were a some splendid narrow sections, as above, which slowed us down to 20 miles per hour at best as did the zigzag climb shown in the photo below. At the top of the zigzag we had a great view of the way we had just come. As we gained height also, the temperature dropped, falling to 6 degrees at the point we turned round. It also came on to rain, giving the landscape the grey, dismal appearance of the Welsh Valleys. Look you, we aren’t used to this sort of weather!

This cliff is known as the hill of human bodies. It probably needs bright sunshine to bring out all the shapes (bring them to life so to speak) but it was still impressive, rising up several hundred feet.

It brightened up again on the way down and we noticed the locals about their usual business as in the next photo for example, washing clothes in the river. It’s seeing these sorts of things that make you realise what an easy life we have back home.

We didn’t get back in daylight, as it happens, because of police holding up the traffic on a particularly barren stretch of countryside for about half an hour while a film crew was shooting, then dismantling and packing away. There was nothing to give any clue about the subject of the filming. Perhaps a documentary on the phenomenon of traffic queues in the desert at twilight?

March 7th & 8th: to Ouazazarte

From our oasis site in Agadz to Ouazarzate is only 40 miles but it takes around 2 hours because of the mountain passes in between. Visibility on the day is excellent so we can take in the barren landscape stretching right to the horizon. There is no sign of life on the hillsides and even the road is deserted. It could be the surface of the moon. We decide to stop at the top of one of the passes to take some photos and it is chilly. So how surprising is this? As we are rolling to a stop at this isolated spot, a figure leaps over the road retaining wall bearing a chameleon and two iguanas. “Photo, or you want buy, I do very cheap price.” As I said in the previous blog, in Morocco there’s always a salesman lying in wait for you.

Ouazarzate Camping Municipal is a standard, functional site, just like the town itself, which was built by the French in the late 1920s as a garrison and administrative centre. The main advantage of staying here is that good day trips can be made in all directions. The first of these was to Ait Benhaddou, a UNESCO World Heritage site.

It’s the ultimate kasbah, used a film set many times, with narrow passages, rooms and staircases everywhere, set in a beautiful location on a hillside with a river running at its foot. There are, as expected, the tourist shops full of everything you have seen elsewhere but there are also some inhabited dwellings which for a small tip you can look round and marvel at the medieval style of living. The photo shows the sort of alleyway found throughout the kasbah.

Ait Benhaddou was on the main camel train route over the high Atlas linking Marrakech with the communities on the edge of the desert and beyond, often as far as the southern Sahara. Local warlords called the Glaoui controlled sections of these routes and levied tolls in return for protection. The power of the Glaoui continued in some parts until the 1930s when the French were able to fully establish their authority by military force. The French also built a metalled road over the Atlas at that time, today’s main road, and that finished off the camel train route almost at a stroke.

When is a castle not a castle? Here in the wilderness it really looks the part: it could be a crusader stronghold in the Holy Land. It’s a film set, and the next snap shows the right-hand section of the castle from the other side. It is built from lightweight plaster panels supported by scaffolding.

The whole construction contained many different sets in different styles and time periods but are all vaguely medieval. The face sides of the sets are incredibly realistic but having served their purpose, part were starting to fall into decay. Presumably, should another film require their usage, they would be patched up rather like buildings are in real life when they are once more needed to be in the spotlight. The following are some examples of these sets:



There are several active studios in the area and films like Lawrence of Arabia, Gladiator, Black Hawk Down, Alexander the Great, Kingdom of Heaven, and Kundun were shot here. The filmmakers are certainly well off for cheap extras, look how well iguana man from above, for instance, would have fitted into an Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves movie.

March 5th: Zagora and Beyond

The Sahara is mainly barren earth, stones and rocks. No vegetation, or almost none, perhaps the odd scrub plant occasionally. But that isn’t the general perception; a desert equals sand in one’s imagination. So off we go to find some REAL desert, some sand dunes.

This is Tinfou, proper sand dunes, and we are about to picnic in the silent, solitary immensity of the Sahara. But solitary the Sahara is not. In Morocco, wherever you are you are never alone: there is always a salesman tracking you. In this case it is the camel trekkers. So we have our picnic, a little gritty due to the wind (proper sandwiches you might say), and then barter for a trek. We struck a deal as you can see, and great fun it was, so you’ll have to put up with several photos of our little expedition.


We usually call at a café sometime on a day out, and at today’s café the proprietor seemed keen to chat, so we asked him how the many different types of tribal headdress are made up. He told us that most headgear was a strip of cloth about 7ft by 3ft, wound round the head in a variety of ways to create the different styles. Of course, he knew an expert in this field, who appeared within seconds bearing a selection of these very lengths of cloth, which he would be happy to sell. Both the “expert” (a shopkeeper from a few doors away) and the proprietor knew their stuff and we had a fun half an hour being rigged in various turbans. The result is the photo below, and naturally we ended up with some cloth lengths, not dear at £4 a piece.

March 3rd: Agdz

Agdz is a fertile valley created by the river Draa that rises in the Atlas and peters out 100 miles from Agdz in the Sahara. Apart from this fertile valley, everything is desert. The campsite is in a walled oasis garden with palm trees that provide much-needed shade in the summer when the temperature reaches 50 degrees. It is the hottest part of Morocco.

This is part of the cultivated area that surrounds the campers. It is serviced by irrigation channels connected to a well from which water is pumped every day by an ancient diesel engine.

The kasbah in the photo is owned by the family who run the campsite and is in the process of being renovated by volunteers. They receive free meals and lodgings in the kasbah rooms that have been restored in return for their work.
What we knew of kasbahs before coming here came from corny comedy, the “come into my kasbah!” of Carry On films. It was generally portrayed as a harem type chamber with billowy curtains and lavish eastern decoration, nothing like the fortified tribal village it really is, with walls of mud and straw bricks, or mud and gravel or stones. These bricks are still made in the traditional way as described in Exodus, mixing the mud and the straw, then drying them in the sun for about 7 days. As all good cookery programmes say, here’s one I made earlier:

The restoration work here tries to replicate the original designs and original materials. Although mud-based structures might seem crude to us, once the walls have been rendered (in mud & straw plaster), the decoration can then be as sophisticated as the owner wishes. This is an example from the campsite kasbah, and the result is very pleasing.

The whole building was a warren of rooms and stairways, and we were able to wander around and lose ourselves at will. The last photo is of our group on the kasbah roof against the background of the lush palmery contrasting with the arid mountain in the background.

March 2nd: Agadir to Agdz

We’re heading east for the desert, but the first 70 or 80 miles contain some of the most fertile land we have so far seen in Morocco. There are orange groves, market gardens and large plastic greenhouses. But as we climb into the foothills of the Atlas range, the scenery gradually becomes more barren. By the time we reach our overnight’s stop at Taliouine, the mountains are almost completely bare, and any greenery is confined to the valleys served by intermittent rivers. This view from the campsite is an example.

Close-up, the valley greenery isn’t much to write home about where it isn’t being formally cultivated, and is suitable only for goat grazing, of which there are many herds.

We’ve also now in Kasbah country. These were defensive buildings containing dwellings, anything from a single large family with dependants, to whole communities of families. The building material was mud and straw with gravel or stones, which deteriorates rapidly without regular maintenance.
The need for defensive buildings has long disappeared so most of these mini fortresses have been abandoned and become derelict. Only in recent decades has it been realised how valuable these structures are as part of Morocco’s heritage and also as tourist attractions, so now many are being restored or partly renovated: in the case above, as a hotel conversion. They don’t seem to be very pro-active in promoting it as a hotel and you only realise it is a hotel when you get close-up. You’d have thought they would have had a big sign on the side saying something like “Kasbah Komfort Inn”.

After leaving Taliouine we soon run into an almost completely bare landscape. The next photo is a variation on the same theme.

This empty region is not without commercial value though and there are several working mines extracting a wide variety of minerals. The lunar landscape below is in the heart of this mining area- the rocks in the foreground even look like lumps of iron. This is where we stopped for a picnic lunch, two hours from our destination, Agdz, along a road the first half of which was atrociou with potholes, lumps and crumbling surface. The remaining half was superb!

26th Feb: Aourir (nearest village to the campsite)

Just a reminder that Health & Safety is paramount in Morocco. This unfenced square hole was a permanent feature in Aourir (aka Banana Village), and the interesting point is that it was purpose built, right in the middle of a busy pavement. It was about 3 feet deep, so a nasty fall was the reward of strolling along inattentively. Could this have been its purpose, to gee up people’s general awareness? Further, could we benefit in the UK from importing these Moroccan holes to make us more self-aware and responsible for our own safety!

Eat here at your peril. The clue is in the name.

Visitors like us who bring their own vehicles to Morocco are rightly concerned about breakdowns. This is an example of the cavalry and certainly looks man enough for the job. Suspicion is that the breakdown recovery might be somewhat too robust: fingers crossed we won’t need to find out.

And finally, a last view of the shoreline outside the campsite: we will be leaving in a few days. It has been a delightful setting and most relaxing: a highly recommended location.