Mountains amid a stone desert. Our little car is visible on the dirt road.
I decided to stay in the car, and Volchiy went to scout ahead. He came back very pleased and said that I would like it very much too. And he was right.
Morocco, 2018
Day 18: October 18
Nkob - Merzouga
Morocco, 2018
Itinerary
Only 4 days have passed, and it is already hard to reconstruct the events accurately. I need to try not to neglect the diary and write day by day.
I remember that we slept badly. By evening, I had a fever. And there were also lots and lots of flies, and we didn’t know how to get rid of them. In the morning, we brewed coffee in our own kettle. While we were drinking coffee, the хозяин of the house came to check on us and brought us a kettle of tea and warm flatbread, fresh from the oven.
We were driving through a stone desert, and then these marvelous mountains began, with sand below, while the mountains themselves resembled some kind of volcanic rock..
Volchiy said he very much wanted to go and see these mountains, so we turned onto a dirt road and drove right up to the foot of them.
The mountain up close. Among the gray rocks, you can find fossilized shells!
The most unusual thing about this mountain was that there were fossils there — petrified shells!
I had wanted to find one like that for so long, and there were quite a lot of them here. Volchiy said it was very much like mushroom picking. We walked along the edge of the sand and watched our feet carefully. Here and there we came across fragments of petrified shells, all the same shape but different sizes. I don’t have any photos of the shells, but to jump ahead, I’ll say that in a couple of days we would come back to this again!
We managed to find only one good, more or less intact shell. I was thrilled! I couldn’t believe that you could just walk along and they would be lying right under your feet. Just think — these shells… I’m almost afraid to guess how old they are.
I think we spent a very, very long time there on that mountain. I was sitting on the sand. It was so pleasant, warm, really warm. And Volchiy kept walking around and around, trying to find more specimens.
Then we set off on our way. The road became unremarkable. Not far from Merzouga, we decided to have lunch. We were craving some hot food. We found a roadside restaurant that looked nice enough. We ordered chicken tagine there, but it turned out to be practically inedible. First of all, it was just a piece of chicken, with no potatoes or carrots as it should have had (and the sly Moroccan from the restaurant started telling me that that’s how it’s supposed to be, that it’s simply a different dish). But even if it had just been tasty chicken, it wouldn’t have been so bad, but the chicken was awful — it was barely chewable; I don’t even know how they managed to ruin it so badly. I was very upset and didn’t even want to pay, but Volchiy disagreed with me.
As we approached Merzouga, dunes appeared on the horizon. It was so amazing: a gray-gray landscape, and then there they were — bright orange dunes.
Approaching Merzouga
Merzouga itself is a rather dreary settlement. Many hotels have been built right in the middle of a stony gray desert, and there is no paved road to them; you just drive wherever your eyes lead you along worn tracks.
Merzouga. One of the few paved streets
We were staying on the very outskirts of Merzouga, and it was quite a long way to the center of the village. So in the evening we drove there by car. On the main street there are many little restaurants, shops, and souvenir stalls. As soon as we turned onto the main street, two Moroccans on mopeds latched onto us. Before we had even managed to get out of the car, they pounced on us with offers to take us into the desert on camels. Volchiy said goodbye to them rather sharply and quickly. And they left empty-handed.
We bought some food supplies and drove home.
Our hotel in Merzouga