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.

The Camels are Coming!

Actually they’re here, next to the campsite. The site has been carved out of a coastal strip of scrubland the remainder of which provides grazing for a herd of several hundred camels. This is a quite extraordinary sight at first, but as they are there all the time you soon get used to seeing them scattered about. This photo is a typical evening scene.

The young camels look bizarre and cute at the same time. This little one looks as if his legs have been dipped in white paint.

And this one only has eyes for Jane! She stroked it for about 10 minutes, and the camel gradually developed that glazed, transported look of ecstasy that says, “ I want you to do this FOR EVER”. We moved off eventually to continue our walk and the camel remained transfixed for a short while but then ambled towards Jane, we presumed, for some more affection. Suddenly it broke into a run- heading straight at Jane. I shouted a warning and she quickly leapt out of the way, sustaining a bruise to her arm (as opposed to a set of hoofprints along her back). A guess at the camel’s thought process – “If I can’t have you, then NOBODY will”.

The best camel stroll had to be the new baby. One camel was lying down with the camel herder in attendance. We approached cautiously so as not to alarm the female, and within about 10 minutes a baby camel was born. You could see it getting stronger by the minute, and within half an hour was sitting confidently alongside mum but fell over every time it tried to stand up. The shadows were now long and the sun near setting: it looked as if they would be sleeping and resting until morning, so we left them in peace.

Feb: Civil Unrest in Morocco

On a more serious note this time. With all the unrest in Arab countries, are we under threat of political turmoil here in Morocco? There is a wide gulf between rich and the numerous poor, and the country is ruled by a powerful royal family. So considerable discontent might be expected, and indeed Sunday 20th Feb saw demonstrations in Rabat (the capital), Casablanca, Marrakech and several large towns. These mainly passed off peacefully, but in one town 5 people died in a bank that was set on fire. This turned out to be criminals who had used the cover of the demonstration to try and rob the bank.

About 35,000 protesters turned out in total, but this is not a large number for the size of the country. Actually, the King seems quite popular and the protesters were not demanding the abolition of the monarchy, rather that he should transfer more of his powers to the elected assembly.

The country is more liberal than most other Arab states, so people don’t feel so repressed. There is freedom of speech, and the influx of tourists and the TV allow Moroccans to see the wider world. The Internet and mobile phones are readily available and cheap.

Tourism also gives all inhabitants a chance to benefit. On the campsite there are private individuals providing the following services: caravan/motorhome cleaning, made-to-measure leather goods, a painter of pictures onto your caravan, fishmonger, greengrocer, general store, awning maker, fancy goods, oil & honey stall.

There is grinding poverty here and low literacy rates, but the economy is expanding, particularly through tourism, and the general feeling seems to be that everybody has a chance, and an improving chance, to make a better life. Morocco is certainly nothing like Gadaffi’s Libya or the fundamentalist regimes, and I’ve had no indication that the average Moroccan wants to take to the streets to move in any sort of extreme direction.