It took us two days to get from Imelil to Tafraout. We started late and the first taxi would only take us to Ansi. So we crammed 8 of us into the taxi. I shared the middle of the front seat with a young boy. Ten minutes into the ride I saw the driver hand him a plastic bag and turned toward Cammie to look out the window while he puked. We stopped and he moved to the backseat, maybe to be by a window? I don't know, they were all speaking Berber. (In case you're counting that is five people now across the back seat.) In Ansi we had to decide whether to go back up to Marrakesh and the more frequently traveled, and hence cheaper, routes or head more directly south. After a lot of discussion and people telling us there were no buses today only tomorrow and getting practically mobbed by two or three people trying to get us to buy something/give them money we made it into a taxi that agreed to take us all the way to Taradounnt. Hey, two very forceful people shoving bracelets at you can feel like a mob when it's well over 40° and you just want to get out of town.

The road South from Ansi is touted by the Lonely Planet as "the most perilous road in Morocco." One lane paved, narrow shoulders, blind corners, abrupt edges. Don't worry mom, I only thought we were going to die twice! Actually, the time we almost drove off the road (unexpected oncoming traffic on a blind downhill corner and all that) Cammie was on the cliff side and could see how close we actually were to the edge. That was the first I'd heard Cammie swear on this trip. We stopped once for tea and so our driver could pray. I'm not sure really though how much he wanted to stop to pray and how much he just wanted a smoke. The second time we stopped just to have coffee. I don't normally drink coffee but our driver got us each a glass and due to the Moroccan tendency to put more sugar than anything else in their beverages it was actually quite tasty. The third time we stopped because there were goats climbing trees. This immediately had Cammie and I plastered to the window and laughing. So when he offered to stop to let us take some photos we quickly assented. I've never seen trees with goats climbing them before, but I guess it's a good adaptive technique since there wasn't any vegetation on the ground for them to eat. The fourth time we stopped I don't even know where we were... a bigger town that didn't look very pleasant and our driver negotiated with another driver to take us the rest of the way to Taradounnt. In Taradounnt our timing was good enough that we were on a bus headed to Agadir within half an hour. AND the bus only left 5minutes after the published departure time. I was impressed. In Agadir we found another taxi that would take us as far as Tiznit. We had a very nice Moroccan pharmacist sitting with us who helped us with our French for the duration of the ride. We stayed the night in Tiznit and finished with a 2hour excruciatingly hot taxi ride to Tafraout the next day.

Labels: Morocco