Wednesday March 13, 2019
Chad and I were up early again for sunrise. Meanwhile, the kids slept in.
After the sun was up, we went down to the dining tent for breakfast, and had pretty much the same buffet that we’d had the day before. We then had an hour or so before it was time to leave, and we spent that time sand boarding. All four of us gave it a go, and ended on a high note with successful runs.
We packed our things and Hamid drove us back on the off-road trail to Merzouga, where Abdul was waiting for us. We loaded up with him, and said our goodbyes to Hamid. Two fun things happened as we were leaving Merzouga. One, the Panda Raid auto race was getting underway, and a number of rally cars (mostly jeeps, really) were hitting the road and caravaned along with us. Two, we had a camel crossing that stopped traffic as they wandered across the road right in front of us! Though by now we’d seen so many camels that it wasn’t quite as much of a novelty.
We made a brief detour to Lake Dayet Srij or ‘Lake Merzouga’ to see the flamingoes, and they were indeed there, though they were not very close to us and the road didn’t wrap around the far shore. Still, we were able to get some good photos with the zoom lens, and it ticked a box on Mallory’s bucket list to see wild flamingoes.
Then it was time for the long drive to the Dades Gorge. Most of the route would retrace the path we’d taken to the desert originally, though we did take the route through Rissani rather than doubling back through Erfoud. Though we had already been down many these roads, I still found it all fascinating and loved watching the world pass by outside my window, and video recording lots of snippets of life along the way.
The scenery got quite spectacular as we left Dades Valley, which we had seen before, and turned onto the road to this gorge, which we hadn’t seen before.
The blue sky against the red rock and the green valley sprinkled with pink flowering peach trees was really something.
As the road climbed up to the top of the gorge, it started to make hairpin turns. At the top was a great spot to pull over to look out at the road and admire the view.
We took the road back down the gorge about a kilometre to our hotel, Chez Pierre.
It is a lovely little boutique type place with beautiful architecture and gardens with a French influence. Even more impressive, it’s built into the side of the cliff. We had some welcome tea and cookies on a terrace, and then dropped our bags and went out for a walk up and down the road to see a bit of the local town, Boumalne Dades.
Our half board package included a fixed menu dinner, so after relaxing on our terrace for a while and having good showers, we went down to the restaurant for dinner. It was fancy French food, and the number of courses astounded us. We had a corn fritter appetizer followed by brioche with creamed mushrooms, pumpkin cream soup, a salad with a chicken pastry similar to a spring roll, and then the main course was duck with red wine sauce and assorted vegetables. Dessert was a selection between 4 options; I chose the creme brûlée. And to top it off, we’d ordered fancy drinks too. Chad had a local Casablanca beer, and I had an avocado and almond smoothie.
Immediately after we ate, the staff came out to perform some local music, drumming and singing for us. The show was only a couple of numbers, short and sweet.
It was after 10 pm by the time we returned to our room, stuffed to the gills.
Cook Family Travels 