We decided to rent a car for 10 days to explore some of the
countryside of Morocco. We picked up our
little Renault and headed south from Marrakech towards Ouarzazate over the
Atlas Mountains. The scenery was
fantastic. The roads were good except
where they were doing road works building new and bigger roads, which seemed to
be everywhere.
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| The Atlas Mountains |
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| The colours were fantastic |
We had booked a room at the Kasbah Dar Dmana which turned
out to be in a poor rural village down a narrow dirt road with huge sink holes long
the edge. I wondered if we would end up
breaking the car’s axle on our first day out.
We were the only guest and the facilities were basic but we had quite beautiful
views of the mountains and desert from the Kasbah terrace.
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| The view from our Kasbah at sunset with the mountains in the background |
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| The Kasbah village |
The next day we went down the Valley of the Roses. This area down the Asif M'Goun River valley
grows almost all of Morocco’s roses used in rose water and perfumery. The ride was very pretty but we didn’t see a
single rose bush. I know it is January
and roses are not blooming but we expected to see pruned bushes but there was
nothing but empty garden plots. I can
only assume that they dig up the roses every autumn and replant in the spring.
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| The entrance to the Valley of the Roses at Kelaat M'gouna |
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| Some cute schoolgirls we befriended |
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| The river valley. Amazing there is so much water in the river when it has not rained for nearly 2 years. |
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| The ochre colours of the cliffs |
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| Village ruins - the mud bricks seem to just dissolve back into the earth |
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| The river valley |
Despite seeing no rose bushes it was a lovely drive up a beautiful valley.
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