SUN, SAND AND.....

...camels of course!

 For the summer holidays the Legsyboys travelled on the plane through clear Moroccan skies to Marrakech. This has been a long awaited destination and we're breaking new ground by going on an organised tour for the first time instead of plotting our own path. After leaving a drizzly London summer's day behind it was quite a shock to leave the silver bird and be hit by 43C temperatures.

Clearing customs was relatively pain free (Travel Tip: you MUST have the address for your first night or you don't get in) and there are ATMs and money launderers in the terminal (Travel Tip: The Moroccan Dirham is a 'closed currency'. In other words, you can get it when you arrive but make sure you convert back before you leave otherwise you can keep the notes as a souvenir). Our driver is waiting for us, as well as the other family who are on our tour. Fifteen minutes later we've checked in to the Hotel El Andalous and immediately jumped into the oasis.

Life's a beach....or a poolside lounge

Over dinner we formally meet our fellow travellers - Chiquita, Richard, Luke and Joel - and our guide Lahcen and we're set for an early departure the next morning. Our driver Achmed heads east around the outskirts of the city and past the only strips of greenery to be seen - the luxurious golf resorts. Similar to Spain, there are olive groves everywhere,

as well as that most useful of plants - the cactus (it is grown for its fruit, used as animal feed, cosmetics from its oil, and to make silk thread). We pass endless Berber villages (villages are easily detected as they all have a mosque minaret)

as we climb North Africa's greatest mountain range, the High Atlas (4,167 metres), and we're heading for Tizi n'Tichka, the highest pass in the mountains (at 2,260 metres it's higher than the highest point in Australia!).

Crystals

Legsyboys and Lahcen

The blazing heat has a side effect in that there is a constant heat haze (Photo Disclaimer: the haze coupled with taking many photos through the window of a moving vehicle doesn't make for great clarity; it isn't practical to ask Achmed to stop every 5 minutes for me to take a pitcher.). At a refreshment stop we pick up some Berber turbans,

A quick glass of berber whiskey...

...and a Cobra ice cream chaser

soon to come in very handy, and then make our way onto the desert plains and the oasis town of Ouarzazate. This old French Foreign Legion site is located on the crossroads of old desert camel caravan routes, and is now known as the Hollywood of Morocco, the film studios here used for many blockbusters (more later in the trip).

Our kasbah's oasis is inviting and after a traditional Moroccan dinner (tagine cooking is unbelievably flavoursome) washed down with 'Berber Whiskey', aka mint tea (Morocco's national drink. As a Muslim nation, alcohol is not allowed - although not illegal - and this green 'gunpowder' tea mixed with fresh mint and heavily laced with sugar is intoxicatingly habit forming...delicious) and some traditional music,

The kasbah's oasis

Rockin' the kasbah

we visit the town market and the impressive UNESCO listed Kasbah Taourirt with over twenty riads within its walls.

Fancy a carpet?

Cactus fruit

Foreign countries can be illuminating - and humbling. The simplest of signs can speak a thousand words....

The Legsyboys adopted mantra

Morocco's religious ideology (more later) and language are points to hand. By and large, Moroccans are Berbers, not arabs, and speak Moroccan (Berber) arabic, most also speak conventional arabic, and a sizeable percentage speak French (it's almost automatic that they will initially address a white person in French) as well as English; four languages and most of us struggle with one!

The next morning we embark on the part of the journey that primarily influenced us to do an organised tour. We make our way through the spectacular Anti Atlas Mountains, truly a geologist's dream and cross into the Draa Valley.

The Draa is Morocco's longest river), and the valley is famous for the date palms (and dates obviously) that populate both sides of the river.

The desert plains around Tazzarine are full of Trilobite and Jurassic fossils and minerals, so much so that they are cut out of the ground and sold to tourists - not so sure this is a good thing to be doing, but with a bottle of water one can find the  fossils absolutely everywhere.

Sharks teeth???

In the middle of nowhere

Fossilised fish head

Exactly where he came from is anybody's guess!

Ditto this fossicker

We pull into Rissani in the 45C heat of the day for lunch and a dip in the oasis.

Presumably they have an excellent vapour recovery system!

Berber whiskey - better than water

Late afternoon we set stock up on water, a liquid that prior to this trip Don Legsy found to be grossly overrated but consumed in copious quantities over the journey (Health Tip: it is essential to only use drink/use bottled water in Morocco, even for things like cleaning teeth) off on the 39km drive south to the tiny Berber village of Merzouga where the dunes of the Sahara Desert begin.

Our caravan awaits us,

 and there's time to put on our turbans before mounting our trusty ships of the desert; what amazing creatures they are.

Ali Baba

Berber honey

Getting up almost causes everyone to fly over the camels' head and it's fair to say that they are not the most comfortable seat we've ever sat in;

Peter O'Toole has never been held in such high estimation as he is right now!

Legsy Of Arabia

Next up...I've been through the desert on a camel with no name.....