To Tata and Foum Zguid

Well we've been back 3 weeks now, me with a nasty chest caught in Wales. Sweetheart has been with us the past fortnight having booked flights last year to time her visit with the African Nations Cup which was of course cancelled here and is currently taking place in Equatorial Guinea. Our foootball crazy friend believes that the ebola outbreak and tourist fears are merely a pretext not to host it as relations with Algeria did not improve as expected this time last year and the border remains closed. Algeria is a favourite for the  Cup, unlike Morocco which only qualified as host and is now not involved, and he believes that the authorities could not face thousands of algerian fans entering the country and then beating the home team. Anyway, as a consolation to sweetheart we agreed to a trip to the desert.

We started south on the road to Tata which we had never used before. We got to Igherm on market day. It is on;y 50 miles from Taroudant but seemed to have moved back half a century. In Taroudant the vast preponderance of women are unveiled so it was a surprise that in Igherm about 95% of the women were fully veiled. We went on to Tata for lunch and then across to Foum Zguid.

 The landscape became increasingly arid with only a few scattered thorn trees, although there were still signs of the late November rains both on washed out bridges and a slight coverage of green in places.

 It reminded me of pictures of the sub-saharan veldt a la Armand and Micheala Dennis.

The mountains looked particularly good with a stripe of purple which turned out to be a particular plant which grew in a ban and  halfway up the elevation.

 There were also strips of vegetation where  the raised road caused moisture to accumulate to the sides.