Conversations in the Atlas' valleys

It’s just a matter of references. I was once in a plane with an Indian friend, flying over the Alps, when he asked me ‘the Alps are quite small, right?’ I was surprised, I never thought about the Alps as small. ‘Well, not really... some peaks are over 4000 meters’ I told him, and he replied ‘so they’re small... Himalayas are over 8000 meters’. Uhm, yes, compared this way, the Alps are not so high, and neither is Atlas, with its highest peaks being around 4000 meters as well.

The Atlas is a mountain chain in the north of Africa which is 2500 km long (five times the Pyrenees, twice the Alps and as long as the Himalayas), and goes through Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia. In the Morocco, it is divided in three: High Atlas, Middle Atlas and Anti-Atlas. We visited some parts of the High Atlas, crossing the Tichka Pass, Dades Valley, Todra Gorges and Valley and Draa Valley. We travelled a lot of kilometers by car, in which we discussed with the guide and learnt a few things.  

From Marrakesh to Ouarzazate through the Tichka Pass

The journey from Marrakesh to Ouarzazate consisted in 200 kilometers of colorful landscapes: reddish, orange and brown alternated with the deep green of the vegetation. It was middle November and the weather was cool during the day, but a bit cold in the night (we were told it could snow, but it did not).

Before the trip, I thought that most of Moroccan people were Arabic. One of the first things I learnt is that this is not true: most of the population are Berber, and they have their own language (berber) and flag. The Berber flag is blue for the sea and ocean, green for nature and mountains and yellow for the sand of the desert. The symbol is a letter from the berber alphabet and it means ‘free man’.

berber flag

Tichka Pass

Near the Tichka Pass we stopped to visit an argan oil cooperative. In that region we saw quite a lot of them: they are women cooperatives which produce cosmetics and food from argan oil (often bio and fair trade). They showed us the argan seeds, and explained us how to select them and prepare them for the oil extraction. We could taste argan oil, honey and marmalade. The visit ended, of course, in a shop where one could find any kind of creams, hair products, oils and feed made by argan. I found the visit interesting but a little bit ‘tourist oriented’.

snake road

souvenirs next to the road

In the evening, we arrived at the Oasis of Fint, the hidden valley between the mountains that I described in the last post ‘the enchanted valley’.

Dades Valley

The Dades river starts in the High Atlas and crosses the mountains through a valley which has the same name. Thanks to the river, in the valley there is a lot of vegetation, in contrast to the surrounding mountains. In the Dades valley there is the longest street of Morocco, which is around 30 kilometers long and crosses several villages.

Dades river

I had often heard that, around the world, there are a lot of fans of the Barcelona football team. But hearing about it is not the same as experiencing it: in Morocco I saw a lot of guys with the Barcelona t-shirt. One day I commented this to the guide, he smiled, and showed us the t-shirt he has under the sweeter: Barcelona football team. We asked him why they were so fans of it and he replied that ‘they play very well and, in addition, they are very friendly’.

a fan of the Barcelona football team

Dades valley

Todra Gorges

Todra Gorges are an impressive place, a narrow valley between high mountains, with the typical colors fo the region, but it has become a touristic attraction. Next to the river there is a path which is full of souvenirs, and there are even some hotels. Fortunately, in this period of the year (November) there was not a lot of people.

Todra Valley

Through the Atlas valleys we saw a lot of kashbas and ksars. The kashbas are palaces built with soil and straw (the straw is mixed with the soil in order to prevent the rain from taking the soil away). A ksar is a full village built in soil.

 Todra valley

The houses built in soil are very cool. The ksar consists in a main street with several smaller lateral streets, all of them covered by the houses. There are some open spaces to let light in, but most of the village is in the shadow, so the temperature inside is really cool, even in summer when the weather is really hot. 

main street in the ksar, in Tinejdad

In Tinejdad, in the Todra valley, we visited the Khorbat, an old ksar which is in reconstruction phase thanks to the association Khorbat for Patrimony and Sustainable Development, which was created to preserve the ksar and develop the economy through the ecotourism.

The population of Tinejdad, over the years, started to abandon the ksar and moved to houses in the external part of the village. The association Khorbat is repairing the ksar and, step by step, motivating people to go back to the internal houses. The association works without governmental funds; they get some international funding but they fund themselves as well by renting rooms and selling handmade objects. They also receive volunteer workers which get a free room.

the ksar from the top of a house

 

Draa Valley

The last of the valleys thet we visited, Draa valley, is drier than the Dades valley. Draa valley is known because the largest part of the Morocco dates production comes from this valley. 

 did you ever see so many palm trees together?

I do not exactly remember in which moment of the journey we discussed about colors. The guide told us that, for them, red color is a bod sign: it is the color of blood, danger signals, firemen... I just could not resist it, I had to ask ‘what about coke?’. We laughed. Is it the sign of globalization?