04 April Tinfou Kasbah Sahara Sky

Last night when we were having dinner the German astronomer owner of the Kasbah Hotel arrived in his big 4WD from Casablanca. He had come by a direct route, through the Atlas Mountains and he said that conditions were very bad there. He had driven through snow and there had been rock falls. Unbeknown to us, we had just seen black, black clouds in the distance, the weather had been bad for several days and conditions at the wadis, where we had encountered axle high water are worse now, with cars queuing to get through and some not able to make it.
After dinner we went up onto the roof of the Hotel, wth 4 Norweigans who are also staying here. Unfortunately, even though the rain had stopped the sky was heavily overcast so there was no point in getting the telescopes lined up. He gave us an interesting little lecture on the relationship of the sun, moon and earth, and some of the planets.
We retired to our luxury suite and after a couple of hands of Crib had a really good night,s sleep, there isn't a minarette in sight, and we definitely didn't hear one.
We woke up this morning to a bright sunny day, a few fluffy white clouds, and no rain. After discussion with our host and with a hand drawn schematic map we set out to do some exploring. We drove out on the narrow surfaced road, pulling over for other vehicles, we went over a pass through a small range of mountains onto a large flat plain, part of the extended Draa oasis and the river bed.  In places there were small areas of cultivation, where water was available, the rest of the plain was a vast tract of sand and sparsh palm trees.
The first stop was a detour of the road to see a village which was rapidly disappearing into the desert as the sands relentlessly encroached upon it. We took a wrong turning and ended up leaving the car and walking over some dunes. We found ourselves close to a school, a girl going past on a bicylce fell off so we went to ask her if she was OK, and were soon surrounded by a group of excited young girls, who on learning that we were English rather than French, produced a text book with Arabic/English phrases. So we went through 'what is your name, how old are you, how is your family', with much giggling and hilarity. We all walked back to the car and we gave them all the pens we had with us. They shouted and waved as we drove away. Instead of retracing our fottsteps exactly back to the main road, we took another dirt track which we thought might take us round the village. It soon became apparent that we were lost, the plain was vast, our handrawn map was no help at all. We tried several routes, not seem to be getting us anywhere, then we found ourselves in a village and we managed to ask for directions to the main road. The only problem was that tracks kept going off at all angles, some looking better used than the one which we were on, so therr were several diversions and stops to ask for further directions before we finally got back onto the surfaced road. The experience was worth the extra time spent a hundred fold. I would have loved to take some photographs and I suspect that the people would not have objected, but to do so felt totally wrong, an intrusion into their lives. Everyone was so friendly, waving at us. It's times like this that I get so frustrated about not having the language to communicate, from the experience with the girls by the school I think Arabic is their first and maybe only language, and the Moroccan version. So neither our poor French nor the Egyptian Arabic phrase book would be any help.
Our next stop was to drive into the Erg Lehoudi Dunes, the only ones we could drive into with our own car. We had discussed whether or not we wanted to take an organised trip into the desert, but decided against it. The dunes here might be a bit taller, but we had had such wonderful experiences camping in the Sahara Desert and then the trip from Siwa Oasis when we were in Egypt that we really didn't want to try and duplicate it, we were happy just toddling along on our own. We had to give up driving on into the desert when we thought that it was more than the Dacia could comfortably handle. Also, unless you are making an excursion, how far do you want to go? So we left the car and wandered around a bit before returning to the main road. It was good to know that we had now been to both sided of the Sahara, the western limit as well as the eastern.
Back on the road we made a stop at a very plush looking hotel/restaurant, La Pasha, where we had been told we could have a drink sitting in very nice surroundings in the shade. It was indeed a very lovely place, a swimming pool, set in an oasis and heavily irrigated. We had phoned with us and were amazed to find that even though we were sitting outside under a verandah, quite a long day from the buildings, we had a wifi connection, so we picked up emails.
After returning to the Hotel we went back down the road a bit to see what had happened after the floods. There a little water standing either side of the road in some places, but the only sign of the previous nights flooding was sand across the road where the water had been. We sat on our terrace in the sun for a while and discussed where to go from here. We have 2 weeks before we need to be in Fes. We think we will take the road from Ouarzazate to Tinerhir and go to both the Dades and Todra Gorges. Tomorrow we will make a short hop back up the road to Agdz and then beyond, aimimg to stop in Ait Benhaddou. We have mixed feelings about this, it is a tourist hotspot, but a bit like the pyramids maybe, 'you just gotta do it'.
We noted today that the majority of the people we saw in the villages on the plain and around are very dark skinned, and many of them bore a resemblance to people we knew from further south in Africa. We learnt that most of them are the descendants of Mali slaves brought in by the nomadic traders.
We had another attempt at star-gazing tonight. Unfortunately, unlike last night when there were only 6 of us on the roof, and the others were Norwegian so the spoken language was English, tonight the hotel had many more guests and most of them were German. It was also not a very good night for seeking out stars as even though there was very little cloud, it is almost full moon. Exactly the same thing happened when we were camping in the Egyptian Desert. What bad luck!
Also our host is a very nice, friendly and helpful man, but when he gets into his dialogue he seems to go omto automatic pilot, so for most of the time we heard information which we had heard the night before and most of which we knew from all the Brian Cox programmes we had watched avidly over last winter. Still we'did'get to look at Saturn and see it's rings quite clearly, as well as the moon.