Friday we drove from the desert to Marrakech via the High Atlas Mountains. The Mountains are higher and more rugged than the previous mountains we had crossed. The scenery was gorgeous, and the road was extremely curvy, as you can see above. For those of you who have seen the movie "Babel" the stretch of road shown here is where they filmed the bus scene. We also drove through the town where "Gladiator", "Kundun", and "Kingdom of Heaven" were filmed. The Jeruselem set for "Kingdom of Heaven" was still there.
The mountains are mostly inhabited by the Berber people. The Berber were the race of people who inhabited Morocco before the Arabs arrived. Surprisingly, Berber people are Caucasian, though many have mixed with Arabs and are darker, and there is some speculation that they be decendant from the Celts in Ireland. They are a loud, boisterous and very happy people and they often call out to you and give you a thumbs up as you ride by. They are also very hardy and have no trouble walking several miles up steep mountain roads.
The drive to Marrakech took about ten hours and we arrived at the Riad Elizabeth just after 7 PM. The riad was beautiful, and is run by and English couple, John and Elizabeth. Like most of the people in Marrakech, and the rest of Morocco, they were very hospitable and generous. There Riad had six rooms, each named for one of there six daughters.
We found Marrakech to be more modern, and interesting than Fez. Even though we were only there for one night, we could tell that we soul like to visit again.
In the morning Mark took us to the airport. Along the way he took us through the central market where you could see everything from fresh sqeezed orange juice stands to snake charmers. We also drove past a mosque (below) that was the tallest structure in Islam when it was built in the 13th century.
Now we are moving on to Italy, and the jury is still out on whether we will ever make it back to Morocco again. -Scott
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