Ait Ben Haddou

This town is famous as it hosted scenes for movies like Lawrence of Arabia. It's a picturesque one but the wind was crazy making the sky look white from the sand and dust so didn't give me a chance to walk the whole thing and picture it. Here's a few ones I managed to take:

Beautiful old doors I managed to picture before the owner came out to break our balls trying to sell us his stuff:

I must admit that the Riad Maktoub where we stayed offers the best personnel I've seen so far.

Very kind and helpful, offered to wash my clothes free of charge (haven't paid the whole bill yet so can't tell you if it's real value for money). It's rare around here to see that people pay attention to other things except your money so I felt like mentioning this nice exception. However, I just came up with another crappy thing about Morocco: I went to the local store to buy some bottled water and the bottles looked to me a bit weird...as if they were not sealed properly while the fridge had lots of water at the bottom. I said to myself "don't tell me they sell imitations of bottled water!". Well...they actually do that too! You can find numerous experiences like this around the net. Hard to comment...

And did I mention I already had more than enough of the same 3-4 dishes that they offer as Moroccan food everywhere? Which by the way (except Cous Cous) is not at all proper food when you have stomach problems like half of Morocco visitors do. And they all like to flood these dishes with cumin...arghhh!

The wind tries to break my window, cats are screaming outside, my stomach feels kinda confident for another night of fight with the local gastronomy I just consumed and I have to get some sleep...

Todra gorge - Ait Ben Haddou

Remember I wondered who's next to have tummy problems? Well, it's actually all of us now with me being the worst case. A complete nightmare that I can't remember when it was the last time I had anything like this but I will spare you the disgusting details. Completely exhausted and dehydrated I got myself on the bike. We met some extremely wide roads on the way that looked to me as if they started an airport and then changed plans:

We often met this kind of walls in the middle of nowhere:

Heading west we made a detour to Dades gorge which is a well known must:

Really unique rock formations in that gorge:

The last half part of that route up to Ait Ben Haddou was the worst I've ever done as I was completely drained, unable to walk more than 10 meters in a row. Still wonder how I managed to arrive in one piece. After a good sleep now I am much better already.

Merzouga - Todra gorge

That was a fast ride via the N12 and the R113 crossing the desert. Nice rock formations on the way enrichen the desert route:

Just in case you forget where you are there's lots of flags to remind you:

Todra river offers to locals a chance to wash their clothes and carpets:

Todra gorge is quite scenic and impressive but we made it on Sunday which was too crowded with too many kids asking us to change them euros for dirhams all the time.

Take a closer look and you'll see the damage to the hotel (center) caused by a huge rock:

Desert

Second victim of Morocco's gastronomy from our group but not that serious again so no change in our plans. Probably a crappy  tea we got offered that I wisely didn't try. I start wondering who's next...

5:30 am we entered a Toyota Land Cruiser to watch the sunrise at the desert dunes. Before I continue commenting the experience I have to say that this car didn't miss a beat going up and down the dunes with 6 people in even on these tires:

My first time in the desert so as you can easily imagine I went speechless. I made it to the top of a dune hiking on this soft sand which of course worth the exhausting effort.

Enjoy:

Halfway up the dune:

My hair gives you an idea about how windy it was up there:

At the end this is how much sand you still have in your shoes after the 5th attempt to empty them:

Merzouga

We just had the first of the gang with stomach problems but fortunately nothing serious so we all ended up in Merzouga. The N13 crosses the desert and we made our first stop at the oasis Tafilalet. Really beautiful thing - I've never seen one in my life.

The top moment though was by far this:

I always wanted to picture a bike of mine at the Sahara and finally my v-strom was the lucky one to step its rubbers on that amazing landscape: