The name, in and of itself, is like a bad comedy routine, some pale imitation of Abbott and Costello doing Who‘s on First. Where? Where’s-zit-at? Wherezizat? Ouarzazate!
The town is located where the Atlas Mountains begin to fall away to the arid wastes of the Sahara. It calls itself a desert town, but it is not the desert I‘ve known. On the edge of town, a lake shimmers in the sun, and the breeze is cool even in early May. An ancient Berber town whose origins lie in the old salt trade of the desert, it has in recent times become a tourist destination. It is where films like Hidalgo, Gladiator, Kingdom of Heaven, and Babel were filmed. The light is flattering; strong yet slanted. Within 30 minutes, you can be bogging down in sand dunes or winding your way through snow-capped mountains.
With May 1st (Moroccan Labour Day) falling on a Friday this year, we decided to take advantage of the long weekend to see a bit of our new country. We planned months ago to go with friends, hopefully in our own car. Although we ending up having to rent a car, we headed off bright and early on Friday morning. I had my usual issues with Ilsa’s version of packing to be gone for 3 days…
I made her take out all but 4 or 5 books.
It takes 4 hours of auto route (read: freeway) to get to Marrakesh. You can see a line of snow-capped peaks in mid-air from quite a distance away. They float, far above the hot rocky plains, seemingly sketched on the empty air. From Marrakesh you turn left and head into the end of the Atlas mountains. The road coils its way up through fields of poppies and pine forests into snow-capped peaks and waterfalls tumbling over barren black rocks. We had heard tales of this road, of the lack of adequate guard rails and of enormous buses and trucks with aggressive drivers sailing around the steep curves, but nothing had prepared us for its beauty, for its red rocks and green grass, its slopes covered in wild lavender and eglantine and daisies. (Note: that was pretend. I don’t really know what the purple and white and yellow flowers were. But didn’t that sound better? If I end up doing a real travel article, I’ll find out official names) We drove past rivers and through tiny towns, one street wide, made of the local red stone. We drove along narrow roads on the sides of steep slopes, eyeing bright carpets spread out to dry on the black rocks far below at the bottom of the valley.
I have much more to write but it was a long drive home and I’m tired. More to come. Also, I was recently paging through one of Donn’s photo magazines, and they had an entire story about intentionally blurry photos. I found it very inspirational, as I took pictures out the window of a moving car. Also that article has given me an effective tool to use against my mr-professional-photographer-perfectionist of a husband. Blurry is the new sharp! I told him.
Our rental was brand-new and didn’t have AC. Good thing it was us. Our AC never worked in Mauritania, where desert temps are usually well above 100 degrees F, so we handled it with grace and wild hair, as usual. But my hair was never as bad as this guy’s…
SNOW!
SNOW!
And some yellow flowers that I didn’t even attempt to identify…but aren’t they lovely?
More tomorrow…insha’allah!
11 comments
May 4, 2009 at 11:31 pm
parlezvouskiwi
Interesting reading – cant wait to read more!
May 5, 2009 at 1:19 am
jolyn
Wow, is she for real??
“Blurry is the new sharp.” I’m definitely going to plagiarize that someday.
Those flowers look like ones we have in our yard that my 6yo daughter keeps wanting to water! Obviously, they don’t need any help to grow…
May 5, 2009 at 1:53 am
Maria
Looks like goldenrod to me, but what do I know? Lovely photos, I love the blurriness.
May 5, 2009 at 2:03 am
Marianna
Your Ilsa packs exactly like my son Amin. He is simply incapable of leaving home without a minimum of twelve books…even for the five minute drive to the library to get yet more books!
Your pictures are lovely. My husband, just tonight, was talking of a trip to Algeria next year. Unfortunately, Algeria is not nearly as charming as Morocco.
May 5, 2009 at 6:17 am
Linda
I’ve only been to Marrakech but would love to explore that area a little more. There are yellow flowers all over here in Provence too which I call weeks since there are so many growing in my yard.
May 5, 2009 at 8:32 am
meredith
Another place I want to visit when we finally make it to Morocco.
May 5, 2009 at 10:42 am
planetnomad
Marianna, we need to keep Ilsa and Amin apart. They are twin souls. Can you imagine them together? They would never get their noses out of their books to get ANYTHING done. They would starve 🙂
I don’t know about Algeria, but I would imagine it is also lovely. It has the same mountains and same coastal plain. I have seen beautiful pictures of Algeria.
Meredith, we want to go back. Maybe your visit could be an excuse?
May 5, 2009 at 3:52 pm
LIB
Wonderful post , wonderful photos.
I fond of quoting Voltaire, “Perfect is the enemy of Good”.
May 5, 2009 at 7:33 pm
Katherine
My older son packs like Ilsa also. He tried to pack about 15-20 books into his backpack (which he would be carrying for much of the trip) for our trip last summer. I finally helped him whittle it down to 6 books – he couldn’t buy many books on the trip because his bag was too heavy already.
May 6, 2009 at 6:43 pm
Carrie
Gee, I wonder where Ilsa got her book-packing tendencies! Just remind her that she really needs room for a sketchbook & some colored pencils, at least!
I’ve wanted to go to Ouerzazate ever since I heard the name. And, it looks wonderful! I hope you write more about it (I read both posts already!)!
May 7, 2009 at 2:24 pm
Mary Witzl
Wow — my kids pack like Ilsa too, especially with books! We could start our own club here…
You really got my excited with those botanical references — so glad you came clean or I swear I’d have looked up ‘eglantine’! My father’s hobby was plants from the Old and New Testament, and he knew them all, common name and Latin. I’m so embarrassed when I see things here I don’t know, but should. Half the time I’m just thrilled to recognize wild mustard and poppies.