Saturday 1 March 2014

Ait Mansour Gorge



Ait Mansour is about 30km SE of Tafroute You take the Tiznit road past Napoleon's Hat. (Tafroute was established by the French as an administative centre and foreign legion outpost; everything has french based names),and turn left at the Tissarart turnoff and then keep going after  the town. The road descends into a steeper and deeper valley which flattens out into a steep sided gorge. 







"Ait" means "spring" and as you get into the gorge there is suddenly lots of running water and the vegetation becomes thick and lush. It is a flat 4km walk through but we decided to drive it. Every house had it's own road sign identifying it in arabic, berber and french. 




We were stopped by two old berber women who spoke to us urgently. We did not understand a word. They repeated themselves more loudly. We did not understand. They repeated more loudly still. If they spoke loudly enough we would understand fluent arabic. Eventually I heard the word "waloo", "nothing". They were telling us there was nothing down the road. We knew the metal road would run out and we would have to turn round without a 4x4 but it was" zshween", pretty so we went on a bit and then turned round.












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