Thursday, January 18, 2024 – Gorges du Dades, Morocco
Jan 21st, 2024 by rallyadmin
We start the day with an oil change for Clemo’s Freelander. On the way out of Fes, we are looking for a proper auto garage but no luck. Everything is either closed or simply a fuel station for fillups.
When finally get to the outskirts of Fez and we see a fuel station with a Huge Scania sign that obviously does truck service. Surely, they can do an oil change on a little Freelander (which actually is a truck.)
They can but they won’t. “We don’t work on autos.” Until Clemo turns on the charm. “We have an emergency and we are going a long way – to the Gambia. And we have our own oil.” The manager agrees and goes off to find a worker to do the work.
The oil change is done. They refuse to take any payment for the work. They do take the Got Cats? Stick and we’re on our way again with the Freelander seeming much happier or at least, much quieter.
The rolling hills near Fez slowly give way to the foot hills of the Atlas range and then higher to about 2,000 meters (6,000 feet in old money) in Ifran, the premier ski area (?) in Morocco. This area is a high plateau the looks like he high plains of Montana. It’s sunny but cold and the wind is blowing.
The road heads back down into a wide valley trapped between two lines of mountains. The lush farms hint at the huge reservoir beneath the ground that is making all this farming possible. We drive along the valley for a couple of hours and then the road starts to climb into the mountain range on the south side of the valley.
The road climbs for an hour or so and then starts to descend through a series of gorges. The road twists and snakes through what seems like and endless series of linked ess turns. It is a truly beautiful road. At the bottom of the gorge (Gorges Ziz, created by the Ziz river), we are back on a relatively flat valley passing through town after hamlet after village, all with the now ubiquitous series of 80-60-40 speed changes and the radar traps that have become so common on this road.
After sunset, we leave the main highway, the N10, and start up the final 15 kms though the Gorges du Dades to our hotel for the night, the Monkey Fingers Hotel. (Yes, the Monkey Fingers Hotel, really.) The road is narrow, twisty and very dark.
Maps has gotten us this far and then tells us to take a right off the main road (such as it is) on to a dirt track that seems just a bit wider than the Freelander. After a number of truns and precipitous potholes, I stop, Pinky climbs out of the truck and heads off on foot for a bit of recon.
Pinky returns with the truly surprising news that we are going the right way. “Follow me.” Easier said than done. A couple of turns and an older Moroccan woman is in the pathway directing me though a gate into a tiny courtyard. We are here. Well, not quite. After about 15 minutes of car jockeying to egt all of the cars parked inside the courtyard, we are done.
The hotel is quite nice and very Moroccan. Dinner is tajine, of course, and very tasty. And then bed. Tomorrow, the drive to Tizi-n-Test, site of the Sep 9, 2023 6.8 magnitude earthquake and where we stayed last year, high up in the Atlas.
Obi-wan