Tafraout verbosity
On our adventures the other day we only took Cammie's camera so you have to wait for pictures of Tafraout. In fact, you may have to wait all summer but I do promise to put them up sometime and in the meantime they should pop up on Cammie's facebook profile if you're a facebook-er.
Tafraout is more than we expected. We got here on Monday, today is Thursday and we still haven't left yet. Although I think we're planning on catching the 6pm bus back to Agadir and the Atlantic coast for a day before our Moroccan adventures draw to a close.
I don't know if Dr. Seuss ever came out to visit Tafraout but I have an inkling that he may have. That would provide a clean explanation for how he came up with all of the weirdly shaped landscapes in his illustrations. The rocks here are fantastic. The coolest ones are of a granular granite (where's one of my many geo-major friends when I need one?) and have been carved into eerie forms by the wind. It makes me suspect that some giant with a lot of sculpy made a playground for me here and then baked it into rock with the sun. (It's 40-50 here mid day... one reason we splurged $20 on a hotel with a pool.) Tuesday we went for a bike ride to the "les pierres bleues" which is artwork out in the desert by, um, I'll have to look up his name in my guidebook, Jean Verges or something. Anyway, in 1984 he came out here and painted a bunch of rocks. These are big rocks too, I think he used some 18 tons of paint. Yeah, I said tons, as in the unit of measure not just the generic term for a lot. We took a nice break scrambling around on them.
We also rode out to the Ameln Valley North of Tafraout. Here we found a sick abandoned Kasbah to explore. I don't even normally use the adjective "sick" so you know it really must have been. Dark, creepy, mud and stone and wood brick floors and walls, some intact some not. We climbed all three stories and kept telling ourselves that the only time these things collapsed was in the spring when they were heavy from moisture. At least nothing broke on us. There were old woven baskets and pottery to sift through. We felt like archeologists.
Seriously a good day out in the countryside. We were out wandering for 9 hours although that included a lot of stops for juice.
Tafraout is more than we expected. We got here on Monday, today is Thursday and we still haven't left yet. Although I think we're planning on catching the 6pm bus back to Agadir and the Atlantic coast for a day before our Moroccan adventures draw to a close.
I don't know if Dr. Seuss ever came out to visit Tafraout but I have an inkling that he may have. That would provide a clean explanation for how he came up with all of the weirdly shaped landscapes in his illustrations. The rocks here are fantastic. The coolest ones are of a granular granite (where's one of my many geo-major friends when I need one?) and have been carved into eerie forms by the wind. It makes me suspect that some giant with a lot of sculpy made a playground for me here and then baked it into rock with the sun. (It's 40-50 here mid day... one reason we splurged $20 on a hotel with a pool.) Tuesday we went for a bike ride to the "les pierres bleues" which is artwork out in the desert by, um, I'll have to look up his name in my guidebook, Jean Verges or something. Anyway, in 1984 he came out here and painted a bunch of rocks. These are big rocks too, I think he used some 18 tons of paint. Yeah, I said tons, as in the unit of measure not just the generic term for a lot. We took a nice break scrambling around on them.
We also rode out to the Ameln Valley North of Tafraout. Here we found a sick abandoned Kasbah to explore. I don't even normally use the adjective "sick" so you know it really must have been. Dark, creepy, mud and stone and wood brick floors and walls, some intact some not. We climbed all three stories and kept telling ourselves that the only time these things collapsed was in the spring when they were heavy from moisture. At least nothing broke on us. There were old woven baskets and pottery to sift through. We felt like archeologists.
Seriously a good day out in the countryside. We were out wandering for 9 hours although that included a lot of stops for juice.
Labels: Morocco
posted by LAV at 15:28
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