After saying goodbye to Aït Benhaddou we had another 4-hour drive through more beautiful countryside, which became gradually rockier as we approached the Dades Gorge. Our Air B&B for the night was located in a small village just across the river from Boulman Dades. Our host was a really friendly man named Youssef. We were the only guests in our huge auberge (French for "inn") and so we got the largest room on the gorge facing side, with a lovely view of the high red walls of the Dades and the green valley below. At the bottom of the valley was a little spring, with fruit trees, corn, herbs, and other small fields on either side. You could hear bird song, frogs, and crickets and the gorge shielded us from much of the hot sun, so it was sunny but fairly cool.
After getting settled at our hotel, we hopped back into the car to drive further into the gorge. We heard that the next 17 kilometers of road was well paved, with beautiful views. There is also a famously winding stretch of road (although the whole of R-704, the highway going through the gorge, is quite twisty!) that we wanted to drive...especially after we saw the men of Top Gear driving it! We spent the next 3 hours making our way through the gorge, stopping whenever we saw a particularly beautiful panoramic view (which was about every quarter mile!) to get out of the car to better admire or to take a picture.
When we got back to the hotel, we still had about 2 and a half hours left before dinner, so we decided to take a walk through the river valley right below our hotel. Youssef suggested a path for us to take, and said that we could even climb up the big red cliffs at the base of the gorge for a great view. We made our way down to the stream, and for the first time could see that another small village was secreted at the base, and we met a few children walking home.
The first hanger on we picked up was Harira, a quiet girl who looked about 9 years old. She walked cautiously along with us, obviously interested in us because she ran to catch us if she fell behind for some reason, but too shy to try to say anything other than her name. However, she flagged down two slightly older boys, obviously brothers because they looked almost identical, to join our caravan. Then, it started to rain. Nate and I ducked under an overhanging wall to wait it out, joined by the two boys. Harira ran home, but paused to wave, and she gave us her one and only smile. As we waited for the rain to stop, we tried to "talk" with the boys--not really talk because they spoke Arabic and French and we know only a few words of each, but we used them all and then made silly faces at them to try to get a smile. We learned their names were Mohammed and Ali. Once the rain stopped, we asked where the "belle vieu panoramic" was and they pointed us away from the village and toward the mountains.
With Mohammed and Ali in the lead, we made our way toward the mountains, through Hassan's garden. Hassan lives at the edge of the village by the river so that he has more room for his fabulous garden, full of fruit trees and herbs. We stumbled upon him as he was picking apricots and oranges and he invited us in for mint tea and a tour of his house. A 5-room concrete building he built himself about 8 years ago, Hassan's house was simple but lovingly cared for. The focal point of his living room was a collage of photos of his family, and he pulled out even more to show us from his "treasure box" in his room. Hassan is highly educated: he attended university and then attended Islamic college to become an imam (incidentally, he told us that Mohammed and Ali were the sons of the village imam), he's traveled, he speaks six languages. And yet he has returned to the small village his family is from, even though his siblings have moved away and on, to live near the mountains he loves.
After our tour, Hassan took us and the boys on a climb up the mountain behind his house. We hiked to the top of the lowest range of rocky cliffs, where the Berber letter "zed" and the symbol for freedom had been painted. Hassan's two tiny dogs tagged along, obviously used to making the climb even with their short legs! After taking in the lovely view, we clambered down for a walk by the riverbed, where we exchanged the names of plants in our different languages--and all four boys somehow independently acquired walking sticks and found plenty of excuses to show off for one another.
Finally, we returned to Hassan's garden where he picked two huge bundles of mint--one for us, and one for Mohammed and Ali. The boys walked us home to our auberge, where we parted ways with many high fives. After a great dinner and spectacular stars, both Nate and Rachael had to agree that this was the best day in Morocco yet.
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