 | We started out by encountering one of the many police convoys. If you're on the opposite side, you'll see a motorcycle cop appear waving his left hand, meaning that you should pull over. |
 | It's a smart move to pull over, since the cars they are escorting, usually trucks, drive on the other side of the road !! |
 | One of the many bridges crossing small rivers. Often the rivers were dried up. |
 | Again we start seeing cactus around the hillsides. |
 | Check out the pollution these trucks generate. No kidding, it's really bad. |
 | Again, some of the scenery was spectacular ! |
 | The mountains and passes we'd need to climb (and descend) were looming straight ahead. |
 | We saw this strange "farm". It looked like they were growing cactus. |
 | Roads are starting to get twisting. |
 | The initial climb is now starting for earnest. |
 | The winding road continues. |
 | Some of the villages look like straight from a history book. |
 | They are clustered together, and all have more or less the same shape. |
 | The tallest col is looming ahead. |
 | The ever present donkey in every village. |
 | Now the serious climb starts. Some curves were protected by barriers, but some weren't, and it was a sheer drop... |
 | And even high up, you'd find hawkers selling their stuff alongside the road. |
 | The scenery here has turned very bare. Virtually no trees, and a lot of sand. We're getting close to the desert. |
 | The roads have straightened out, and we're riding on another plateau. |
 | Here, at least they were repairing the road. But you were left on your own in finding an alternate route. Often when the road was gone, you'd be in sand, or worse, deep gravel.
When the road was substituted by sand, they pour oil over it so that it doesn't blow away. |
 | We felt like that at any moments, you'd see a stage coach and indians... |
 | On the plateau, the first clouds started appearing. |
 | Whenever we saw trees, you'd see a river close-by. |
 | We stopped, again, at a roadside restaurant for lunch. This one was totally isolated, with no houses nearby.
Also, no built-in butcher. This was a Berber place, and we had a Berber omelette. |
 | It was only 4 or 5 tables outside. The guy did say that he could accommodate several people in his house, but one look at the toilet, and we decided to pass.. |
 | The ride onwards would become even more desolate. This is the start of the desert (not all desert are just pure sand). |
 | Very special these villages. Looks like straight out of a movie. |
 | The road continues towards Ouarzazate. |
 | And the clouds start to look menacing. |
 | Yet another red clay village... |
 | The final 10 kilometers. |
 | One of the two movie studios. The biggest one is the Atlas Studios, but they're building at 16,000 hectares one, which is a joint production of all Hollywood studios. |
 | One of the main squares in Ouarzazate. They were getting ready for some festival of some sort... |
 | This is the hotel we stayed in. It sits right inside the Atlas Movie Studios (not that famous people stay there, since there are 5 star deluxe hotels in the city), and is full of movie memorabilia. |
 | Outside the hotel you can see many of the movie props. The jet fighter in the background was used in the Michael Douglas movie "Jewel of the Nile". |
 | The Ouarzazate medina area. |
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