Leaving early means arriving early, giving us almost a whole day to
look around in Marrakech. We started with a visit to the el Badi palace.
All of the marble has gone, the palace is now the home of a lot of storks/ooievaars/cigognes,
which have their nests on top of the walls. The garden is filled with orange
trees, and some big fish are living in the pool. Some nice lighting in
the underground tunnels as well, and the doors are getting a little bit
tired of hanging around all day long....
Near the palace is the la Kasba mosque, with the saadien tombs next
to it. In the afternoon, we visited a pharmacist/drogist/pharmacien, who
had remedies for everything from snoaring to stress and so on. His shop
is nicely decorated, a lot of flashy colored stuff in the pots.
At the end of the day, we travelled to Demnate, which is the starting
point of the tour.
Although we booked a cycle trip, the next day started with a short
hike into a ravine. Lots of pigeons, so also a lot of bird droppings :-/
But after that, we got on our bikes until lunch time.
The lunch consisted of mint tea and a big tasty salad, and was followed
by a siesta. A lot of kids were hanging around and looking at us; something
that happened almost every time we stopped somewhere. But it was
time get back on the bike in order to reach the camp site.
The next photo shows our bikes, still nice and shiny. The one
next to it is not a sunset, but the moon at 10 'o clock in the evening:
there really was a lot of moonlight, but also a minor exposure problem
:-)
Monday started with some very nice weather :-( It had been raining
during the night, and we woke up in the clouds. The dry dirt road was transformed
into something muddy and sticky. I have no pictures of this, didn't want
to get mud all over my camera. And if someone knows how to get those red-brown
stains out of my white socks, let me know! Later on, the rain stopped and
the country side changed. We had lunch near the Ait Adel dam, and after
a last climb, the road went mainly down hill to our camp site, an
old factory building.
The weather was a lot better the following morning, so we enjoyed the
4-hour hike through the hills. We passed some salt mines/zoutwinningen/salines,
traversed a small village (no water, no electricity, but some have solar-powered
TV reception!), followed by a river crossing and a long stretch up-hill
to our lunch stop.
Some dark clouds were forming behind us, but we had almost reached our
camp site before it actually started raining again.
Some dogs tried to keep us awake at night, but they didn't succeed
very well. Wednesday was a real off-road day, no tarmac to be seen.
We cycled through some small villages, tasted bread and olive oil,
and to finish it off, a nice muddy road to get from the lunch stop to the
camp site. In case you wonder, the white thing on the left is the shower:
half a bucket of cold water can do a lot of good when you're dirty, even
when the outside temperature is going down quickly. A day without rain
by the way!
That changed a little bit on thursday, it rained when we got up. Normally,
we would have started with a hike through the hills, but that was not possible
because of the rain of the recent days. Instead, we made a detour by bike,
going out of the mountains onto the plains. It started raining again, and
with wet tents and a wet camp site, we opted for a dry room where we spent
the afternoon playing cards. Near sunset, the sun came through the
clouds, creating spectacular views and nice colors.
After a clear night with a sky full of stars, yet another sunny day.
There is snow on the peaks of the Atlas, something that was invisible the
day before because of the clouds. We had to adapt our trajectory a little
due to the swollen rivers, so we arrived in Marakech before noon, cycling
through the small streets until we got to the Djemaa El Fna square in the
center of the city.
After the lunch break in a small restaurant, we went to the hotel where
we took our first warm shower in a week, before going into town to visit
the souks. Some people clearly pay too much for too little, you need to
negociate hard to get the price down to an acceptable level.
The friday ended with dinner in the relatively classy restaurant of
the Foucauld hotel. We walked by the Koutoubia(?) on the way back to our
own hotel.Saturday morning was the occasion to spend our last dirhams in
town before going to the airport. During take-off , we got a nice view
of the city.
And that was that, 3 hours later we were back in Paris.
Thanks to Mohammed, Hussein, Omar, and Ahmed, our guide, cook, mecanicien,
and driver.
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