M'hamid is the end of the road for the Draa Valley. After, the roads to the border or east with the river are piste only. The road itself has been single track since Zagora.It is prone to sand-drifts and there are woven palm sandbreaks in diamonds at the side of the road to try and keep it clear.
The signs by the road remind you not to leave rubbish and to keep the desert clean and conserve water. Also not to leave the road in a car; i.e. use the pistes only with a 4wheel or camels. It is also the end of the road for the petty criminals serving internal exile rather than imprisonment (victim's election). There is a strong military presence this close to the border and little of touristic interest but it is the place to come for your desert trips to Chigaga. It used to be that Marrakesh was billed as the gateway to the desert, then Ouazazate, then Zagora, but now it is M'hamid.
Just north of the town is a pretty little 10km palmerie, Ouled Driss.
There are some nice Chamres D'Hotes and a really interesting little museum in a restored Ksar. It reminded us of similar museums in the Sakawatti. I was particularly taken with the triangular baby walker next to the cradle.
When we went up to the dam we noticed some enormous buildings being built to the north of the town. We could not understand what it was, steel frameworks for hangar-like buildings on a monster scale. Then when we got back from the Draa there were signs on the lamposts all round the town.
As they were trilingual, Arabic, Berber and French and French was the 3rd language buried in the middle we never were able to read them properly. (The arabic lessons are not progressing well).
It was publicity for a trade fair on cattle farming.
We went on the last day. The scale was almost up to the Royal Welch but cattle only. I couldn't tell if the cattle had been judged competitively but I think not. There were no rosettes and they didn't look quite groomed enough. The show was free and clearly set up to encourage the development of the industry, but it was very popular. The impression was that perhaps the major business had already been done with the VIPs early in the show but there was a stream of visitors.
The cattle displayed were overwhelmingly Holsteins.
There were a few Charlerois
and another similar French breed, but the animal attracting most interest and crowds 4 deep to see was the Aberdeen Angus bull.
There were no Fresians, Jerseys, Guernseys or Herefords; a french selection.
There was a hall of trade stands and an outdoor display of major league equipment.
This was all high capital investment, industrial scale farming, although one stand did have alongside the mega-equipment some of those old-fashioned milk churns you used to have in the days when the milk lorry came daily. I got the impression they were encouraging those 700-1000+ indoor farms where the cows decide when to be milked and they are fed silage all year. I found that rather confusing as one always thinks that Morocco's strengths are in labout intensive industry.
Many of the firms exhibiting are obviously multi-national but the general representaion seemd French and I was disappointed not to see more British firms, indeed there did not seem to be many Dutch or German either and, accepting in was a Francophone / Arabic exhibition it seems a bit of a lost opportunity if the state/King is encouraging a major growth in Cattle farming.
Nasrate is a small oasis palmerie on piste off the Tinfou - Mohammed road. It is gradually being absorbed by the Sahara in its move north and half is now buried in dunes. Despite this it has a spanking new Lycee.
The car got stuck in sand. Fritz the hotel owner had been encouraging us to go to the Erg Lihoudi Dunes which are accessed by a piste further down the road with a couple of sand patches so he had been instructing us in how to walk a car out of sand by getting out to lighten the weight and pushing it turning over on the starter motor. We were in the middle of Nasrate village when we got stuck in a 10m or so drift of sand which was deeper than we thought. We followed Fritz's instructions. The starter motor wasn't enough to keep turning over so Beloved had to get back in to press the accelerator. We were going nowhere and getting more stuck. A donkey cart arrived with 3 men and a boy. They left the boy to look after the donkey and the men got out, found straw to place under the wheels, pushed bounced the car out of the sand, and got back onto the cart and kept going before we could say "shukran". It is as though removing stuck tourists from the road is a normal part of life.
We did not go to the Erg Lihoudi Dunes.
About 20km south of Tamegoute is Tinfou. It is famous for its dune and if you are sold a trip to the desert from Zagora this is where they will bring you although the real dunes are further south at Erg Lihoudi or Chigaga.
The dune at Tinfou is reputed to be there because there is a buried Kasbah underneath. It has been made a national monument to deter treasure hunters pending some future excavation but rumours of tunnels and fabulous treasure remain.
A more recent development at Tinfou is the local Kasbah Hotel being bought by a german (altough he has lived all over the world, Argentina, Australia, USA but never Germany) who is a keen astronomer. He has built an observatory on the roof and has 2 pretty high end optical telescopes. They take advantage of the clear Sahara skies and the absolute dark with no light pollution and the Sahara Sky Hotel is now a destination for astronomers woorld wide. We went there so that Beloved could participate but they wait until ablut 11pm to go up when the stars are fully risen and after driving he couldn't keep awake and was snoring away instead.
Beloved's schoolfriend the Drummer is one of those people who says he'll come and visit us here but I know he won't because he actually reads this blog. The world is divided into those who read this blog and dream but don't visit and those who visit but don't read the blog even when they've been told to to plan trips out.
Being a drummer is quite a cool occupation and we have enjoyed several jaunts to see him play, but I always remember him for the apple cake he had just cooked on a visit a few years ago. This autumn I managed to extract the recipe. He says he thinks it was originally Mary Berry but to me it will always be the drummer's. I made it the other day. It is wonderful when cold and I have been having it for breakfast. (I can get quite continental once toast is off the menu). But when it is hot from the oven it is otherwordly in it's delectableness almost best apple pie plus. I wondered if it froze well but neither he nor I have kept any long enough to freeze it and try.
For an 8" cake tin or 2lb loaf tin
150g/5oz butter
2 large eggs
225g/8oz caster sugar
5ml/1tsp almond essence
225g/8oz selfraising flour
11/2tsp baking powder
675g/11/2lb cooking apples
Preheat oven to 160C Gas Mark 3
Melt butter until just runny
In a large bowl beat in eggs, sugar and essence
Fold in sifted flour and baking powder
Spread 2/3 mixture in cake tin
Peel,core and slice apples and lay over mixture
Add the rest of the mixture
Cook 1-11/2 hours until apple is cooked
I used a loaf tin and it only took 40mins
I also substituted rose water for almond essence as I did not have any.
Best hot but keeps in fridge up to 4 days
In 2005 we did not even realise there was a pottery in Tamegroute although it has been there for centuries. The founders of the zaouia brought potters from Fez to start it and there a still similarities in style. Now you cannot miss the row of shops that have sprung up along the road.
The pottery is at the back using only traditional techniques. Its main specialty is a green manganese glaze. It is used for lots of things but particularly for roof tiles used on mosques and palaces and every mosque in Morocco got its tile from Tamegroute.
There are also Fez like blue and multi-coloured patterned ware and a range of Henna glazes. I bought one.
In a perfect world it would go back to Wales to house my aspdistra but that means it is too big for hand luggage so I guess it will stay here.
The manganese glaze is mixed on the ground and then left for a day or so to before being qpplied to the pots.
They are then baked in the kilns dug into a mud bank and fed with local vegetaion the traditional way.
The kilns reach temperatures of 1200C-1400c and the pots are baked for 7 hours. All the temperature judgements are done by sight and experience. They actually have some newer kilns but the potters prefer to use only traditional methods so they are now very expensive store cupboards.
