A Grand Day Out In The Mountains

 

Just look at this for a spectacular view through the early morning mist and yes, that's where we are going today.

Leaving Tafraout, we headed into the mountains via the Amelen Valley, in order to spend a little time familiarising ourselves with driving on single track roads. If your experience has been rural Wales or Scotland, then in Morocco it's very different. For a start , the mind set of the on-coming driver is not always courteous and one has to virtually come to a halt in the middle of the road and then gradually let one wheel slip off the tarmac, down a knife edged, vertical drop, onto the grit of the hard shoulder, for want of a better description. So it's a bit like a stand off, seeing who blinks first! No passing places.

In places, there are dotted lines down the middle of strips of tarmac that hug the contours of hills and  elsewhere,  there are hairpin bends that give you a white knuckle ride.
 Beautifully painted villages, cling to the valley sides.The shepherds herd their flocks of sheep and goats.

Tethered donkeys graze wherever they can find a few blades of coarse grass and camels just wander everywhere, ignoring road users, although the guy with this group was most apologetic

There were goats up argon trees .We cheated last year and took a photo from a postcard! Berber nomads were camped in the scrub land as we began our descent,   and hectares of cacti, grown for silk production, clothed the hillsides.



Back on the main road and this amazing piece of overtaking took place not far from our stop for the night.

The rest of our stay can be seen tomorrow as we toot and wait.