Our bus to Ouarzazate left at 10 am. We headed SE passing lots of nice home & large apartment buildings for the first 15-20 min which then turned to orchards as we entered the foothills of the Atlas Mountains. Goats & sheep as well as tiny stucco houses started to show up. We followed the almost dry river bed. We drove through many fairly good size villages with small paddies of bright green grasses for goat feed, wheat & vegetable growing. Obviously they were watered as there were many more totally dead paddies. It only rains about 1/2 inch a month for 7 months of the year! As the snow caps of the mountains got closer, our bus took more & tighter S curves. Sheer cliffs and rock-covered slopes surrounded us. And in this barren area—occasionally we'd see a make-shift roadside stand with tables pilled high with geodes! We reached the pass at about 8000 ft, we slowly started back to the dry river bed. Palm trees & patches of bright yellow flowers gradually appeared & then became more frequent. It was a 6 hour trip which included one lunch break. All on excellent roads that they were still improving by adding drain pipes & better shoulders. We were ready to quit riding when we got to Ouarzazate so we scraped our plans to go to a smaller town a bit farther by cab. We checked into a rather old hotel close to the bus station. We quickly found the Medina where kids were riding battery operated toys & the souqs were open. We decided to get a SIM card & scarves for our desert stay. It was so much calmer than the sougs at Marrikesh! Next morning we checked out the city which we learned had about died out until Hollywood discover it in about 2006. Several sets were built—some included original kashbahs. So Hollywood $$ flowed into town. We checked out the sets & a museum filled with props & watched a film that showed clips from movies filmed here: Gladiator, Babel, Prince of Egypt, Joseph, Aladdin, Jewel of the Nile & many bible stories. Who knew we'd see so much of Egypt & Israel in Morocco! It was quite a modern city!
We climbed back on the bus at 4:30 pm for our 6 hour drive to M'Hammid. Shortly outside of Ouarzazate, we saw the world's largest solar array which supplies electricity to about 2 million people. We again followed an almost dry river bank passing through occasional villages with walled kashbahs. We wondered how there can be any way people here can earn a living. We saw several football (soccer) games, men gathered for tea & chatting and the only painted buildings were what appeared to be for kids. As we grew bolder to the snow covered mountains, the river bed had a bit more water & lots of trees were in bloom. Once again we had lots of S curves both up & down the mountains. Around 10 pm, we got to M'Hammid & walked the 300 m to our hotel at the Sahara Services. Our host welcomed.us & soon we were down for the night in a really nice room.
