Based on past experiences, we were all looking forward to exquisite accommodations. No such luck. Dated, dark, hot and dingy, we tried to make ourselves as comfortable as we could. Chris and Jeremy wrestled a few cockroaches in their room while Ben and I went on a search for ours. Finally located in the unlit back wall of the courtyard grounds, Ben and I decided that we just weren't comfortable being so far away from everyone else. We got lucky and they exchanged our room with one that was front and center and had a working AC unit. Im still not sure if we had bugs or not because we slept with all the lights on!
We were prepared another authentic meal but this time at a Kasbar. Once the opulent residence of the village chief, it is now a traditional Moroccan restaurant. The open courtyard with red carpeted floors and white linen tables was our dining room where we were served under tents and the stars while enjoying the sound and sights of Moroccan musicians and dancers. The meal consisted of a tomato based bean soup, a sweet AND savory pastry of chicken and cinnamon (interesting), fresh fruit and all the bread you could eat. Exhausted, we returned to our hotel (eew!) and caught a few minutes of wifi before hitting the hay.
The next day we hit the road again. We stopped at a small shop where we were encouraged to by scarves for our camel trek. Bins and racks overflowing covered in colorful sheer cotton scarves made the decision to purchase one very enticing. They taught us the traditional head wrap process guaranteed to keep the sand out. Everyone was giddy about the whole thing and consulted each other on just the right color and style of wrap. This, of course, was right up Ben's alley. He chose a light blue scarf to match the t-shirt he had on and began the routine of tying and untying his scarf. Visibly frustrated, several people came to his rescue but once they turned around, Ben would pull it off of his head with utter dissatisfaction. It was the longee of Myanmar all over again! I had to walk away.
Just outside Ouarzazat, we reached the Riad Oasis, the biggest oasis in Morocco at approximately 20 kilometers wide. A massive plain of green in a valley surrounded by harsh chiseled mountainsides painted with horizontal stripes of black and gold stone. It was filled with thick palm trees, dense and lush vegetation, large green plants with pink flowers like an oleander and cacti to remind you that you are in the desert.
A few more hours down the road, we lunched in the city of Zagora. We were taken to another traditional Moroccan restaurant and fed foods from tangines along with baskets of bread. I guess that's the big cooking method here and it works great. Everything was delicious but I still wasn't bowled over. Enough with all the bread! Where the heck was the couscous?!
The last hour and a half drive was through the other side of the High Atlas. It was the desert side called The Anti Atlas. The scenery was so different here. Much more dry, rocky and barren. The living is harder here on this side of the Atlas. They cannot grow crops and they cannot raise sheep or goats. They do sell a lot of pottery though.
We stopped in one of the Berber villages that we'd been passing all the while through the mountains. The Berber people are the original nomads of Morocco. They moved from place to place all throughout the year. After realizing that they were returning to certain places at the same time each year for one reason or another, they decided to build villages and set up residence. They constructed their homes out of a mud and straw mixture. Their houses were rectangular buildings that shared walls with the other homes which then resulted in a village. It is quite a thing to see these settlements from a distance. Since they are made of the earth, they are almost invisible, blending into the desert mountainsides. I felt like we were on the set of Star Wars (not certain of the episode) where young Anikan first meets Quigon Jin.
The people we visited in this village made their living from making and selling pottery. It is an amazing process to watch and everyone from the littlest child makes something from clay. They have turntables set up in a few small dark huts where they create their pieces. Interestingly, the seat and foot pedal is placed in a hole about 3 feet wide and the table is at ground level. So to work the table, the young man explaining the process to us, lowered himself down into the hole. Only his torso above ground, he grabbed some clay and began turning. When we were satisfied, we thanked him graciously and headed out. "You pay money?" He wanted payment as an admission fee to watch him turn the clay. They wanted money for everything including taking pictures of them. I had nothing on me and went to find Chris. He was out by the stoves where they were firing the handmade pottery. A very primitive hole in the ground with a constant fire, they rotated out new pottery with palettes of oven hardened earthenware. I found Jeremy bartering with one of the kids who was about 5 years old. He wanted money for a small clay creature he'd made (looked like a dog but I really couldn't tell). Apparently, Jeremy was interested in the little sculpture and traded him a half-full bottle of water for the "dog". The boy took the deal and ran! Jeremy informed me that we were not to give these people money. Handouts only encouraged their life of poverty. They were not educated people and did not have the intention at all to do better for their children. They merely existed until they did not anymore.
The people who were ambitious, had a store for their clay products. We gladly dropped a few dirhams here ; ) Jeremy and Ben were even convince to try a henna tattoo that many of the girls were getting. They both manned up but uninspired by the dainty designs the girls chose, they both asked the tattoo artist to write their names in Arabic on the inside of their forearms. Jeremy even added a scorpion and Ben got a camel. Great artistry, the boys were satisfied with their decision. As we walked to the bus, Ben proudly showed off his new tattoo to our tour guide, Abduhla. He held Ben's arm and said, "Ah!...BILL!" I wish you could have seen Ben's face! A typo for a tattoo!
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