Saturday, January 8, 2011

Frankie's Travels Day 5 - the Ziz valley

The grass and shrubs have given up almost completely and the terrain is covered in steep hillsides and huge boulders and sheer cliffs of layered sheets of rock. This is the Ziz valley.

I think this scenery is really beautiful in an earthy kind of way... It is in stark contrast with the clear blue skies and it feels very remote out here.

And then occasional water source location pops up along with the palm trees and castle looking buildings - exactly like how I imagine an oasis.

From the crowded narrow streets of Fes yesterday, this wide open space is a refreshing change and I think any trip to Morocco would not be complete without experiencing both.

And now after all my dramatic poetic speech... We turn a corner and there is a huge dam ahead of us. This dam is used to generate hydropower and irrigated the valley. The rocky steep hillsides with sparse vegetation remain but the dam is a big wet blue contradiction to my "we're in the middle of nowhere" descriptions. The scenery is still pretty good for staring at tho...

After lunch we made our final stop off before the last stretch of driving into the desert where we will be camping. We stopped off at a look out point 250km from the (closed) border with Algeria. The look out point looks over a green date palm rich section of the Ziz valley. There are 1.5 million date trees in the valley And both male and female plants. The Ziz valley is famous for dates. There are many many different kinds of dates from here.

The architecture is Berber style with square windows and minarets and the people are traditional with large extended family groups residing together and the women dressed conservatively with everything covered except one eye. They are garbed in black from head to toe because black is not see through and so preserves modesty however their clothes are not without self expression. The head scarves are embroidered and fringed in multicolours. Different colour trousers peek out above different fashion shoes. The fashion, it seems, is yellow slippers.

Next stop: Desert camp for sunset! (by an amusing co-incidence, the reading book I have with me is Dune)

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