08 April Todra Gorge

Tonight we are in the Todra Gorge in a tourist hotel, a far cry from the last few nights, and they don't have internet.

Last night at Chez Pierre was truly amazing. The supper meal was fantastic, we do believe the reputation of the chef/owner. In fact we both agreed that at home we would have paid £80 for that meal alone, never mind the fantastic room, the sun terrace, one of the best hot showers we have ever had etc., etc. We were given a complimentary bottle of a very nice red Moroccan wine, then we started with a few olives, then some light as light can be puff pastry tartlets with a selection of vegetable and cheese toppings. Next came a bowl of bean-y cream-y soup, with a background taste of herbs. The bread was warm and light. Then there was a peeled stuffed tomato drizzled with a delicious sauce and stuffed with prawns and herbs. The next course was, wait for it, couscous, but not couscous as we have ever had it before.  Instead of a big bowl full with vegetables heaped on top it was a neat little mould of saffron flavoured couscous topped with a medley of chopped charred vegetables and beside it a parcel of tender as you can have it chicken stuffed with a green vegetable, something like spinach or chard. I am very ashamed to say that at this point I had to back down, I just couldn't finish it all, much to the waiter's consternation. Pudding was a light chocolate sponge with a crispy chocolate coating and a rich ice-cream, I couldn't quite place the flavour of the ice cream but I think it was cardoman. We finished with tea, a blend of herbs but mainly thyme and rosemary. Breakfast this morning was also very good, eggs, crepes, olives, honey, jams, yoghurts, freshly squeezed orange juice, as much strong black coffee as we could drink. As we left we had a large bottle of water pressed on us for our journey.
I need not have worried above the heights or hairpin bends in the Todra Gorge, it is very different to the two previous gorges in the High Atlas. This is mainly because the road follows the river, at the base of the canyon, rather than clinging to the sides. It does have an impact value, but for me nothing like the Dades and the Valley of the Roses, for a start I had my eyes open all the time. From Chez Pierre we retraced our footsteps to the main road and continued through mostly barren scrub to the town of Tinerhir where we branched off onto the road leading into the Todra Gorge. The first thing which struck us was the commercialisation and the number of tourists. The entrance to the Gorge is through a narrow gap in the rocks and this was lined with stalls selling all manner of tourist stuff. We checked into one of two large hotels at the entrance to the Gorge. The room is small and a bit poky and there is a background cheesy sort of smell, but it is clean and has a toilet and shower, but no hot water.
The whole area was heaving with big tour buses, small tour buses and tourists of every nationality. At first we couldn't understand it, but then we realised that as far as the entrance the road is accessible to all the tour buses, and as far as the tourists are concerned, if they haven't seen the other two Gorges they don't know what they are missing. We have both been feeling a bit blobby, two weeks and no real exercise, so after checking into the hotel we decided to take a walk. We walked for about 5 kilometres along the road into the Gorge, it was amazing, at the entrance to the Gorge there were crowds of people, but only one kilometre on there was no one. We saw a Spanish couple (we assume, there was a Spanish registered vehicle parked beside the road) climbing. It all looked very, very scary, one of the pair was slowly making their way up a rock face, hammering things, ?pitons¿ into the rock wall while the other one let the rope out. Further on we saw a man sitting astride a rock high above us at the side of the road, his white turban glistening in the sun. Close to him were four camels grazing on the hillside, he waved to us and we waved back and we shouted greetings to each other in no language, just shouts. I thought how ironical it is, that you visit all these places and take all those photographs that have no meaning. The photographs you want to take, the memories you will remember, are not possible. I could not take a photo of that man with his camels, but the picture will remain in my memories for some time to come.
We kept expecting something dramatic to happen, the road to climb above the valley, but it just continued along the river bed. After five kms we decided to turn back and pick up the car and go further to see how the Gorge developed, so we did and drove further on into the Gorge. The rock formations are quite dramatic, but for us it did not have the impact value of those we had seen on the previous two days.
So here we are, back at the hotel, the day-trippers have gone, but the hotel is full of tour parties, they are here in their too short skirts (the women) and their too short shorts (the men, mostly), and we are hanging out until after supper when we will probably escape to our matchbox room with a smuggled bottle of wine, in case they have a disco of Moroccan or any other  music.
We've booked ahead for tomorrow night, somewhere in Mergouza, back in the desert close to the Erg Chebbi Dunes. It isn't in our Rough Guide, but the very helpful young man at Chez Pierre last night gave us the number of a friend of his from university who works at a place down there. As the stopping off point for desert trips we expect it to be quite booked up over this week, so we thought we would play safe and take him up on it. If we don't like it we can look around once we are there. Another important development tonight is that we have contacted the local guy in Fes who looks after Michael Howard's Riad to see if we can go earlier than we had booked, and it seems that we can. One of the reasons that we don't book ahead when we are travelling is that we frequently change our plans on a daily basis as the trip unfolds, and this one is no exception. We now plan to go to Fes after the trip to the desert which will give us much more freedom to choose how we make our way back to Marrakesh and which other places we take in en route.

Rubbish: Most places in Morocco are very clean, especially in the large urban areas. We have seen nothing like the piles of rubbish which we saw in Egypt. We think that most smaller places must have a town 'tip', we have seen some smouldering piles on the outskirts. These might not be too well managed as around them we have come across various detritus hooked in trees and bushes, presumably the result of winds. We just found a rubbish bin in the Gorge and were pleased to be able to deposit a bag of rubbish, orange and banana peel, chocolate biscuit and crisp packet wrappers, which we have been carrying around for a week looking for somewhere to put it. We haven't been able to find a public rubbish bin anywhere else. When we were in the desert dunes close to Tinfou we were sad to see the remains of camping and day trips, plastic bottles, aluminium foil, and empty tin cans, John collected so many empty sardine tins. Today walking up the Gorge it was obvious that fly-tipping had been taking place, bags just thrown from the road into the river, plastic bags, disposable nappies and cans. Beside the road broken glass from wine and beer bottle sparkled in the sun. Maybe it has been the same in other places and because we have been in the car, travellinb more quickly, we haven't seen it. We can't think that tourists would have done this, it was high up on the road, past where any tour buses would go, we saw only local people there.

Holidays/religious days: We didn't expect a 3-day weekend. We assumed that banks for example would close on Friday, the day of prayer, and Saturday, the Sabbath. They are closed on Sundays as well. Isn't Sunday a Christian dedicated day? The Gorge was full of Moroccans today, was it normal for any Sunday, if so that means that everyone has Sunday as a holiday, not just the banks. Or was it even busier because it is Easter Sunday? If so, why?
There are a lot of questions I would like to find the answers to when I get an opportunity.