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The return journey from Merzouga to Marrakech was another twelve and a half hour bus ride – check out my earlier post on the drive down for more detail about the landscape. All I wrote in my notebook on Day Eight was “utter hell”. Still over-tired from camping in the desert,…
Thanks to the tourism generated by the Erg Chebbi dunes, hotels in the Saharan region of South Morocco are not hard to come by. In the larger towns of Rissani and Erfoud there are plenty of big hotels to choose from, but these are still a fair drive away from…
After our camel trek, we had the remainder of day seven put aside for chilling out. There wasn’t much space in our schedule for traditional holiday relaxing, so I was looking forward to lounging by the pool under the Saharan sun. Very lazily, I’ve copied the below musings straight out…
While the camels rested after our early morning trek through the Erg Chebbi dunes (see my last post) Hassan introduced me to a girl baking bread. This was done in a small stone room on the edge of the village, about two meters long, with one window out of which…
Hassan was an aging berber with a beaming smile under a bushy moustache, a couple of missing teeth and glinting black eyes. We met him at 4am, bleery eyed and blinking in the dim dawn light outside our hotel, and his cheeriness felt like an assult. He showed us how…
On Sunday morning we woke up late, still stiff from the day before and utterly disorientated. Visions of dirt tracks and narrow alleys in the darkness swam before my eyes from the night before. Wandering outside, we found the quiet courtyard of our hotel, brimming with rose bushes and smelling…
Early Saturday morning, after five nights in the city, we embarked on the second stage of our trip. This was the part I’d been most looking forward to, and a huge tick for my bucket list: an trip to visit the Sahara in Morocco. Not a trip for those who…
23 March 2012 Our last day in Marrakech was cooler and a little overcast, which was welcome as we were still feeling a little overheated from the day before (see my previous post about the Cascades d’Ouzoud). We left our riad around half eleven and headed straight down the Rue…
I wrote about the Ouzoud Falls, or Cascades d’Ouzoud, in my last post, but as they are just so pretty I thought I’d include a few more of my photographs. The Ouzoud Falls – ouzoud meaning olive in Berber – are located in the Azilal district in the Atlas mountains around 150km…
Thursday 22 March 2012 When it comes to getting out of Marrakech, there are a host of excursions and day trips to choose from. Morocco is an enormous country with a rich and diverse topography, so it seems a shame to stay in just one place. Everywhere we looked in…
The Ensemble Artisanal in Marrakech is a complex of shops on the edge of the Nouvelle Ville, close to the main square and the Koutoubia Mosque. Although the souqs are an unmissable experience, this is a great alternative for tourists who, like me, find haggling a little stressful. The complex…
