Ouarzazate, Morocco

From Taliouine east we travelled through a rather flat and featureless landscape, stoney and bleak, coloured only by the frequent collections of plastic bags, to Ouarzazate (pronounced, according to Moroccans and tourists alike as ‘where’s it at’).  It’s a new-ish town, put on the map many years ago by (mostly American) movie moguls who made films like Lawrence of Arabia and Kundun here, as well as hundreds of spaghetti westerns.  A couple of movie studios are still there, and there’s an impressive wall with several huge Egyptian  statues standing guard over nothing more than the red dust of the surrounding desert.  Just before Ouarzazate we came across a 1950’s style gas station with a sign saying ‘cold beer’ and ‘last gas station for 200 miles.’  Undoubtedly built for some B-rated shoot-em-up American western, it looked very at home in the sandy barren landscape.  Of course there was no beer or gas to be had there.

The town of Ouarzazate was a newish and somewhat natty place, befitting for the movie stars and their entourages who spent, and from time to time still spend, a few days or weeks shooting movies there.  We had one of the best meals we’ve had yet in Morocco: a very colourful salad Nicoise, with green beans, pickled beets, grated carrot, hard-boiled egg, olives, cucumber and tomatoes, all beautifully arranged on clean white platters.  And perfectly sweetened lemonade (that is, not sickly sweet as it often is, but not mouth-puckering tart either).   

But the highlight of the day was yet to come: an amusing, and very memorable, transaction at the local bank.  We now refer to it as the ‘Moroccan Bank Error in Our Favour.’  First off, the super-efficient and somewhat dismissive clerk who exchanged our travellers’ cheques for cash gave us the American exchange rate for our Canadian currency cheques.  So we were already considerably up on the deal.  Then the clerk miscounted the number of cheques we had given him, all in $100 denominations, so we got an extra US$100 worth of Moroccan money.  Now we were way up on the deal; a veritable bonanza.  If that weren’t enough, to top it off, the clerk also allowed us no time to review his paperwork or count the 7000 Durhams he gave us, in seven bundles of ten 100 Durham notes.  One of the bundles had eleven 100 Durham notes in it.  Given the guy’s attitude towards us we had no qualms about capitalizing on his errors, and headed right back to our favourite café to celebrate with another lemonade.  

We continued east from Ouarzazate, through the bleak desert landscape on our way to one of the best known and most spectacular sites in Morocco: Dades Gorge.  The road heading up to the Gorge passed through a fantastical world of kasbahs and weird rock formations, sometimes folded into vertical fingers, sometimes rugged and precarious-looking, balanced one atop another.  We were often above the valley, which was almost completely divided into neat plots and terraces, all green with winter wheat.  Lots of birches, fig and almond trees, now prettily in bloom.  Lovely oleander bushes everywhere.  The odd stand of date palms.  All very beautiful in the last light of day, the rocky canyon walls glowing gold and orchre, the green valley in lush contrast.

We stopped at a wonderful auberge with very friendly staff.  The first night we were the only guests for dinner. The young lads who were our waiters called us down to dinner by playing on their drums.  We all sat in the welcome warmth of a propane heater, chatting in a mixture of French, Spanish and English.  We had an excellent tagine of chicken and vegetables, perfectly spiced.  Our room was equipped with an electric heater, so we were warm for the first time in several days (since Taroudant), and as an added bonus had a nice hot shower.  So we decided to stay another night…. .