Tamtattouchte, Morocco
Monday, November 19, 2007
It was a good job we turned back the night before, because the road through the Todra Gorge got worse and worse as we went along and would have been impossible to drive in the dark. There had been a large amount of unexpected rain last summer that had destroyed the road. What once may have been a reasonable tarmac road was now crumbling away and in places had been so undercut that it had fallen into the river bed. Where there was no tarmac we drove along rough tracks, swerving past rocks that had fallen from the cliffs above.
In one place the road had been so destroyed that the route was diverted into the dried up riverbed. For part of the journey we followed a van so laden that people had to sit on the roof. I later discovered from a few Italian backpackers at our hostel/campsite, that these are mini buses and they had just experienced being squashed into one with 28 other smelly people (I'm sure the max capacity is about 12). I spent the evening watching Italian TV and chatting with the 3 Italian backpackers and 5 Moroccans from the local town. I was the only girl and considering the reputation of Italian and Moroccan men, they behaved themselves quite well.
The campsite we stayed at was on the top of a hill overlooking Tamtattouchte in the valley. The view was great, but it was incredibly windy and the van rattled all night, we were lucky not to be blown away.
