Near Rissani, we'd also stopped at a second rug showplace, where the rugs flew before our eyes seductively. [Just ask my whimpering VISA.] And afterward ate "Berber pizza" and drank the everflowing mint tea.
We also stopped to see how marble quarried from these mountains is transformed into tables, fountains, sinks, sculptures, cups, and a host of other products. Marble here is packed with fossils--mostly ammonites, trilobites and orthoceras. Morocco has one of the most famous large deposits. Hundreds of millions of years ago, as they died, their shells accumulated in great numbers on the sea floor where they were aligned by currents, buried by sediments, and transformed over the ages into stone. It's somewhat ironic that this prehistoric sea floor is found at the northern fringe of our era's Sahara Desert.
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Aziz took a chance trying his hand at polishing one table slab. |  |
 | For our time in Tinerhir and the nearby Todra Gorge, we had one of the most articulate, controversial, friendly, and audacious local guides we'd encountered. Brahim--a proud, proud Berber with a degree in French literature--really won our hearts and fed our minds--from how community gardens work, to botanical facts, to political insights, to carting oranges for the weary and thirsty on the gorge hike. The Todra Gorge is Morocco's Grand Canyon--sunlight turning sandstone yellows into fiery reds, with rock walls to 300 meters high. |  |
Even here, billboards (of a sort)! |  |
During the stay in Tinerhir, we visited a workshop training disabled young people in trades and crafts from embroidery to metal work. Even under optimal conditions, taking photos of people in Morocco needs to be done cautiously, with a polite request first. In many cases people cheerfully agree, but in other cases, people resort to the tourists' voracious appetite for 'photo ops' to earn a few dirhams. All this is my explanation for not having photos here of the friendly smiles at the workshop -- where girls were stitching and boys were welding and all seemed to be accomplishing the aims of (1) providing livelihood skills and (2) combatting the prevalent stigma about disabilities in this society.
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| Some odds and ends: As we drive, we spot kestrels circling, and we've seen a bulbul, black wheatears and white-crowned black wheatears. Mary found in one small shop a bottle labeled as an "anti-horniness remedy" which, after deciphering some of the words in other languages, we determined was a prime example of mangled translation, and was in fact a defoliator. Unemployment according to the government is officially 11%; many feel it is double that in fact. We've passed some reforestration projects with wee trees the size of table top Christmas trees, but it's a start. Generally speaking, women die at younger ages than men, and also because they refuse to get medical help, as there are few if any women doctors they would find acceptable to see. During these couple of days around Tinerhir, the gastric bugs crawled my way for a couple days. In one of hotels, delightful housekeeping staff of Souad, Nadia, and Hannan sympathized. |  |
We stayed in Tinerhir two nights, then headed to the UNESCO World Heritage site of Ait Benhaddou through the Dades Valley, famous for rose water, and known as the "Valley of a Thousand Kasbahs." We stopped en route at a Berber pharmacy, full of wonderful swirls of scent. Ait Benhaddou's fortifications with the crenellated towers has served as a film makers dream background for movies such as Lawrence of Arabia.
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Through the High Atlas we drove, on well-paved but very winding, twisting roads that our driver Driss handled with calm aplomb, even when a huge lorry forced him to within a hair of the cliffside. Views were panoramic and breathtaking and it was hard to believe amidst the snow-capped mountain views and many terraced farming settlements that only a day or two before we had been 4-wheeling in the Sahara! Even at viewpoints where we could gingerly step out for photo ops, perching on the heights and trying not to blow away, and where we'd seen absolutely no sign of people before we stopped, out of the rocky crannies would come sellers of fossils, scarves, crystals, and other knick-knacks.
