Day 10, was a day for all of us to calm down after a very busy day mucking about in dunes.
Firstly I'm sorry to keep you waiting for Day 10, I have been very busy at work and did not find time to update my blogg, boo hoo I hear.Anyway, as discussed in the last blogg, after our desert adventure and a mad dash in the middle of the night to find somewhere to stay we ended up in a small Dar at Tamegroute, the Dar's name was Jnane. It was quite a checking procedure because the owner was expecting a large family and all of us lot turned up covered in sand and probably looking like we had rolled about in the sand.
It took the owner about an hour to sort our rooms out before we all sloped of to bed for a well earned shower and some needed rest. Some of us were a little grumpy after spending the whole day what seemed like travelling around in circles so we decided not to travel the following morning. What we did find out was a library next to the hotel and an underground town. So we decided to get a guide and go there in the morning.
I took some pictures of the dar in the morning.
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| The dar food area. |
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| A tent, if you fancy sleeping out in the open. |
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| The gardens |
The library the 'khizana habsia' of Tamegroute, with its thousands of manuscripts was one of the richest of North Africa. Some fine examples of the collection of manuscripts (now 4200) are still on display in the zawiya today and attract many tourists from Morocco and abroad. Among them are a 14th-century Quran. I nicked the above from Wikipedia.
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| The library entrance |
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| Our guide showing Rachel how to use the knockers |
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| Rachel banging the knockers |
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| Walking away from the Library, our guide in the background |
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| Dog tired |
Anyway, in the morning we meet our guide and set off around the town for a three hour tour of the library and also the pottery's and a walk within the town. Now I'm not one for a guided tour, but this was a great relief from the previous days efforts and we all enjoyed it.
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| Mr Guide |
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| Part of Tamegroute village |
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| Even darker underground |
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| Yay a break in the gloom, Rachel posing |
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| Blimey this goes on for a while |
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| A couple of locals going about their daily stuff |
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| Typical pottery shop |
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| Random trailer and window |
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| Pots baking in the sun |
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| Potters working with local clay |
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| Potter making tagine pots |
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| Even more pots |
The tour of the local pottery was fun, Sid had fun on the pottery wheel, for a while he looked like Douglas Bader and they even had some gas powered ovens made by Germans. We did get to look at some of the finished products and the go to a local shop, via the underground town, all good yay!
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| Sid making a large brown penis, with a child watching? |
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| That's better, no penis to be seen now |
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| Semi dry pots |
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| German gas powered oven, which the locals cannot pay to run |
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| The finished product |
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| More finished product |
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| Local street sign |
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| Shakey Stevens lives here |
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| Hmm, help get me out of here! |
The Garsides did not come on the tour because the 90 now had two flats in need of repair so they spent their time fixing tyres etc whilst we were bogging at people making pots and also walking about.
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| Changing the front tyre, Morocco style |
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| Ken lending a hand |
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| Hmmmm P38 missing its bull bars |
We ended up at the end of the tour going into a shop for a no pressure selling session from one of the locals.
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| Ken looking very thoughtfull |
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| Moroccan stuff |
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| Adam dressing up like a blue local |
I personally did not end up buying anything, but some of us did. It was a good morning and we really did forget the previous days efforts.
At about lunch time we decided to go onto towards Tata and headed out of Tamegroute with Sid short of his onesie.
The journey towards Tata on the N12 was a mix of no-road, un paved road, pave road, and road with men working on the road, in the road. What a laugh, also the odd camel was knocking about. I have never driven around a roadworks before, but I have now. We did have one or two moments when the rest of the chaps were a long was behind, but this was fair enough as we were chucking up some dust for a while. I'm sure the N12 will be fab in a few years.
We ended in Foum-Zguid, well just short in a campsite/hotel called Bab Rimal, we just pulled in asked if we could camp in the car park, we then proceeded to have a beer of ten. At this point you really need to know that buying ten small beers in Morocco is like buying two bottles of good scotch in the UK, it is expensive. Oh well we were on holiday, we needed a break and this worked well after the mornings activities.
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| Pool at night |
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| Pool vista |
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| Wonderful start to a sunset |
So the night ended up with some of us a little tipsy, but everyone enjoyed it, even the mad ones who went for a swim.
