Morocco or Less Rocko?

I’ve discovered that Morerocks has been inappropriately named, as there are millions and billions and trillions of rocks in Morocco. They DON’T need even one more rock!

As Alan’s blog describes, we’ve driven for hours over a small part of the Sahara and also the Anti Atlas mountain area. Both have a beauty and majesty only nature can create and both are mainly rocks of many different sizes, colours and forms.

I would like to rename this country Less Rocco…..

The people we’ve met here are desperate to make a living, either off the land (and boy, that’s a struggle) or from their businesses. They are mostly a bit shy, gentle, ready to laugh and keen to share stories. There seems to be a blend of a few races and tribes in their backgrounds and I’m still getting used to Arabic people chatting away in French!

Contrary to how oases are portrayed in the cartoons, they can spread over many kms and consist of a mixture of palms, grasses and prickly shrubs, with, of course, the sandy desert base. I don’t know how the people grow vegetables in the oases, as most of them are dry on the surface. I guess a lot of animal dung and recycled plant material help the sand to become more like soil, coupled with years of persistence!

Yesterday we found a weir and a series of aqueducts under construction. We couldn’t resist a skinny-dip with the frogs, despite this being a Muslim country and spying a group of men mixing concrete about 50 metres away… AFTER we’d stripped off! So nice to be wet all over after days camping in the desert!

We’ve deleted the other loop of the route Klaus and Willi gave us that would have taken us into more desert. My hair is straw and my skin is sandpaper and in the intense dry heat, I feel like I can barely breathe! It’s nuts to venture into the desert alone in the heat as there’s no one else about. We drove a whole day and didn’t see one vehicle… Alan changing a tyre in 50 degrees C, full sun, wasn’t good.

However Morocco is spectacular and well worth the trip. For us, it’s like India, Iran, Mongolia and parts of China all rolled into one. The colourful pottery and hand woven carpets are beautiful. The Argan oil helps with the sandpaper skin, too!

Bye for now!