Todra Gorge

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It was a beautiful drive from Rabat to Todra Gorge, it took us just under two days of driving to get there.
We saw monkeys on the side of the road, and villiages in places you wouldn't expect to see villiages. In a seemingly endless expanse of nothingness would emerge villages made of mud bricks surrounded by palm trees and corn fields. Irrigation is amazing.

When we arrived in Todra Gorge we started in the incredibly touristy portion along with hoards of French and Spanish tour busses. It was a pretty cool view from the centre of the gorge, but for us, the fun was only starting.

We camped further up the gorge at a small hotel away from the crowds. For the first time on the trip we were away from city lights and campground flood lights and we were able to enjoy the stars on a clear night.

The next day we had free to explore. The hotel manager suggested a 6 hour loop that would take us through the gorge to a small town and then back to the campground. After 6 hours in the heat of the day we reached the town of Tamtatouchte. We were followed endlessly by kids in the street (although accidently walking across a school grounds didn't help things). Finally we encountered a young guy who invited us in for tea. We were hesitant at first but he assured us that there would be a bus that could take us back to the gorge and finally conviced us to come in. The guy was super nice and told us about his job as a mountaineering guide. He never once gave us the impression that he wanted money or anything else out of us other than good conversation. Once again we were very glad to be able to communicate in French. It was a refreshing change from the "nothing's free in Morocco" motto. He wasn't able to flag down a ride for us, so we ended up walking another 10km back to camp. In all, our "6-hour hike" was an all day 22km excursion. Did I mention it was hot?

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Photos

Monkeys
We believe that these are Barbery monkeys.

Lunch stop
It's amazing what they can do with irrigation.

Comments

[gécko]

ha?
hi kathye Never seen a monkey with a red jumper .smile gécko