Jeep trip from Marrakech to the Atlas mountains - not for the faint hearted

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Day 2 - Jeep trip from Marrakech to the Tizi-N-Tichka pass, Telouet, Ait Benhaddou, Ouarzazate, and back ....

Off we went on our jeep trip into the Atlas mountains. We discovered quite early on that sitting in the back of a 7-seater jeep, travelling at 80 kph, is not a huge lot of fun, so we had quite a lot of stops for changing places, and for getting rid of our breakfast, snack, lunch, etc. ....
As I say, this trip is not for the faint-hearted. The views are amazing, and if you are into narrow trails on the edge of a ravine, with two-way traffic - then this is JUST what you want to do for a day or two :-) We were told that this trail is part of the Paris-Dakar race, and now we understand why it was cancelled this year !!!
I can imagine that driving up to the Tizi-N-Tichka pass is really impressive in the winter, when the mountains are covered in snow, but in early November we had glorious sunshine and not a speck of snow to be seen. We almost didn't realize that we had reached the pass, until the driver said we were on our way down ...
Now, talking about the driver - he was a wonderful 24-year-old, who spoke both English and French (I was the only non-native French speaker in our group, and having been married to a Parisien for 17 years, my French is more than passable). He was both driver and guide, and was great. BTW, we booked the jeep+driver+petrol for just $180 per day, and with us, a day was between 12 and 14 hours, so that was fantastic value. I'll add a picture soon (my computer with all the photos of the trip just died - I hope that the backups work ...).
I must admit that Telouet, Ait Benhaddou and Ouarzazate did not live up to my expectations, after having read a lot about them in travel guides and asking people on forums etc. What we did enjoy was the old movie studios at Ouarzazatte, and the young guide was very informative. There are loads of famous films that have been made in these studios, and you may ask - why Morocco? Well, first, it's much cheaper than California, but more important is the light - they have great natural light here for most of the day, which comes out well in films.
Tip number 2 if you want to go to the Atlas mountains, and you don't want to spend so much time, take the Ourika trip from Marrakech, rather than the one we took. If you want to spend more time, don't do this trip in one day (we got back to the hotel at 22:00) - spread it out over two or more days, and add other parts of the country arround Ouarzazate and towards the desert. If you are into hiking - you'll probably be better off with the Toubkal mountain.

I don't know if anyone ever reading this is Jewish and keeps Kosher, but we are, so here's another tip - the company we got the jeep from (www.moroccotraveling.com) know about Kosher, and can arrange kosher food (so they say). In our case, we had asked for a vegetarian lunch, so as not to complicate things (but that's for another blog ...). The place they took us to eat was far from vegetarian, so the boss, who met us at Ouarzazate went out with one of our group, bought fresh and canned food that we could eat, checked that the couscous was cooked in separate utensils (which made it ok for us to each), bought brand new dishes and brought them to the restaurant, and organized the whole lunch for us in no time at all. Now that's what I call service.

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