Marvelous Marrakech

We have arrived in the main port-of-call for Morocco, Marrakech. It is totally different from everywhere else in Morocco, especially in the tourist numbers. Europeans have definitely discovered Marrakech and are making the most of it. Unfortunately it is extremely disappointing that they have not made the effort to respect the islamic culture of Morocco and are still parading around in outfits that are not appropriate for the country. Where as Fes and Meknes were very compact and bussling, Marrakech is much more spread out with a rarity in Morocco, public parks. There is a beautiful mosque overlooking the main square, which burst into life at night with hundreds of food stalls selling everything from fish and chips moroccan style to goats head. Also in amongst the food stalls are monkey trainers, snake charmers, henna artists, etc... We will be here for a couple more days before heading to the beach.

As per the previous post we have been busy seeing the Sahara desert and the Atlas Montains. The Sahara was our first stop and was slightly dissapointing. The dunes although quite impressive did not blozw you away. However we spent a nice day relaxing in the shade then went for a long walk at sunset around the dunes (see pic).

Next stop was fantastic, we went to a place called Dades Gorge right on the edge between the Sahara and Atlas Mountains. A river had cut a beautiful gorge valley out of the red rock to create a thin oasis in the desert. We stayed here for 3 days in a beautiful hotel literally 1 m from the river. We spent the days wandering around the valley amusing the local kids and managed to do a hike up to the solar plateau to see the start of the Atlas Mountains and visit a nomad family. We eventually tore ourselves away from there and visited Ait Benhaddou, which has the best preseved Kasbah in the Atlas region and host of movies such as Lawrence of Arabia and Gladiator.