Dades Gorge

April 17, 2024

and then off-pavement to Boutharar

Barking dogs kept most of us from having a good sleep. Plus, my sinuses are clogged today. Virus, or simply because of the dry air and sand? My skin is dry and my hair too.

Breakfast was very good today, with the buffet including a Berber omelet, which is eggs with tomato and onion flavoured with cumin and cooked in a tagine, and also msemmen, the square bread I've become quite fond of. I wasn't sure I'd be a fan of mint tea for breakfast, but it's fine.

Today will be another picnic lunch, so we stopped first thing at a small grocery store that didn’t look like much. It turned out that they had a bakery in the store, and were setting warm pain au chocolate.what a find! But the store had no fresh veg, so that required another quick stop, where there was also an opportunity for the coffee drinkers to grab a cappuccino. Oh, I’d love a decaf, but that’s not an option here.

It was extra hazy today, so maybe the wind picked up again in the desert. We are so lucky to have been there when it was calm.

Our ride today was in the Dades Valley aka Valley of a Thousand Kasbahs and known to locals as Fig Valley because there are many fig trees. This is the first place we've heard about damage from the September 2023 earthquake. There was minor earthquake damage here and one person died.

We had a fabulous descent on a paved road. We were all thankful that it wasn’t too busy with cars. And there were almost no buses, unlike yesterday. We're clearly in a tourist area though, with signs in an interesting mix of languages. Almost all are bilingual. More French than English, but lots of people speak English. Some restauant signs have no Arabic on them at all.

We chatted very briefly with a Moroccan who lived in Pennsylvania. Hicham says that lots of people go to abroad to work (mostly to Europe), and then return with money to build a house.

I know I’ve been going on about the Laughing Cow cheese. But here’s why: a tiny grocery store had this huge selection of processed cheeses. One big benefit is that they don’t require refrigeration.

Getting the tagine dishes ready to cook at our morning coffee stop. They’re all made on an open burner, not in an oven.

The twisty upper end of the Dades Gorge. Thankfully, we rode it downhill.

The terrain was amazing, and there wasn’t much traffic.

Ruins of a kasbah (fortress), with a hazy sky background.

We took a snack break at a scenic overlook.

Nowhere green in sight, and the buildings blend right in.

Leslie’s bike crapped out again - she’s had continual issues with her drivetrain skipping gears and jamming up. And we have no suitable spares because of the thefts in Tangier. She traded with Youssef for good.

After the full descent of the valley, we started our only off-road adventure of the trip. We headed uphill and had our picnic lunch in a cave with a 21 year old nomad woman and her baby, plus another toddler she was looking after. Her husband was away at the weekly market.

What a tough way to live. Water is a 30 minute walk. They’ll go higher up for the summer when it gets too hot here, and have another spot for the winter too. They have a mule and a camel to move their belongings. The cave was full of blankets. She served us tea. I sure hope the water was boiled. Hicham says she’s likely not literate and has no easy access to medical care - the grandmother and grandfather who shared the cave both died in the last year. There will be someone in the tribe who delivers babies. And the kids will get vaccinated. The lunch was a bit weird since we weren’t really introduced to the woman in the cave, we’re eating our own food in front of here, and didn’t learn anything about her until the end. For her, I imagine it was hard to host strangers and a Moroccan man without her husband being present. We never learned her name. We did leave food behind, and some money too. But presumably Intrepid also pays them.

Starting our off-road journey, it felt hot in the sun. And my bike computer agreed. This is the ‘feels like’ temperature, not the real temp.

This looks like a tough place to eke out a living.

Heading down to the cave entrance. This solar panel powers a light. The cave was also equipped with a bottle of gas to power a camping type single burner stove.

We saw baby goats and chickens. And they have sheep somewhere (we didn’t see them).

Our picnic lunch. Congrats to my friends brave enough to try the delicious spicy sardines that I’d purchased. So much better than plain tuna.

Then we had a beautiful but very dusty ride on an unpaved track over and down to the Valley of the Roses, ending at a mountain gite at the lower end of the village of Boutharar.

We had only one guide on a bike because Hicham’s e-bike crapped out and couldn’t be fixed, so he took the bike that Youssef was using, which was Leslies’s crappy bike. Youssef rode in the bike truck with Pheena who wasn’t feeling well.

The wind was in our faces as we biked, and it was very dusty. Despite the heat, I stopped to put on my Buff to guard against breathing sand.

A 4x4 tour went by in the other direction, driving jacked-up SUVs, and didn’t slow down as they passed me. Jerks in 4x4s are a global phenomenon, I guess.

Heading across to Boutharar and the Valley of the Roses.

The bikes weren’t great. But they did have really good Vittoria tires that were suitable for this road.

Boutharar is a sad looking town with the first aggressive kids we've encountered. One of them grabbed my wrist as I biked by. It was a bit alarming since I was by myself at the time. But our eco gite is really lovely.

After the dusty ride, it was nice to have a hot shower, but I was acutely aware of how precious a commodity it is in this dry part of Morocco. A note in the room says the laundry is washed by hand. There has been electricity in this valley only since 2006.

Leslie reported that they won’t be able to ask her to get back on the crappy Cannondale because it was lying down in the bike trailer and the brake levers got broken off.

Dinner was outdoors on a really nice covered terrace. We ate dates as a starter. Barley soup was next, eaten with a spoon made from orange wood, then barley couscous with chicken and various veg. Our trip itinerary reported that we'd be eating goat tonight, but I got the feeling Hicham didn’t want goat. dinner was a bit dull, but there was nice harissa on the table to spice up the couscous- it contained preserved lemons and hot peppers. Dessert was delicious slices of fresh melons.

Barley soup, eaten with a hand-carved spoon.

Our bikes were safely stowed in the courtyard.

Veg served over couscous made from barley flour rather than wheat flour.

There was no wasting of materials when they built this place - the floor tiles are a mix of whatever was available, and the lid of our toilet had been broken into multiple pieces and glued back together.

The eco gite had terrible Wi-Fi, but gets bonus points for a very nice room with comfy beds and duvets.

We’re at the upper end of the Valley of the Roses. After dinner, there were frogs chirping incredibly loudly. As a lullaby, that sure beats last night’s barking dogs.

Today's ride: 37 km (23 miles)
Total: 307 km (191 miles)

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