174. The long and winding road

Aït Ben Haddou, Ouarzazate, Morocco

About double the distance that we normally set

A monster drive today but spectacular through some of the lower Atlas Mountains. 

Geoff and Susan are travelling into Spain early April so we are planning to meet up again though I doubt they will be able to sustain the gift rate for the children as they have been very generous to date.

We drove through towns and areas obviously recently drenched but for the large part we dodged the worst of it. Through some of the towns it would appear that the bulk of the population are wandering across the road at any one time so in many cases twenty kilometres per hour seemed too fast. The open roads were good with the last few hours on sealed single carriageway in good condition with occasional monster potholes to crash through.

At one of the passes we stopped at a deserted car park at the top so that the children could go to the toilet in the Giantavan and a man appeared out of a hut and beckoned us in. I went in first and he displayed in the dim interior a vast collection of impressive fossils and rocks and Geodes. He worked hard on me to buy a large Geode weighing many kilograms but in the end I purchased a cricket ball sized Geode for the one hundred durhams asked as it was less than ten euro. I think this must have embarrassed him as he insisted on our taking many gifts of other rocks and fossils. On arrival we had been greeted with the traditional French kiss and I had the same on departing however Jacqueline got nailed right on the smacker which left her less than impressed!

Impressive city walls of Tarouant