Ouarzazate (day 9)

After a good night of sleep I'm feeling a lot better today, more energetic and alive. I do have a bad tickling cough and cold symptoms. Well, today for today there's something nice on the program!

With a nice breakfast in our stomach we took the jeep (once again) to drive for a while, first on an asphalt road and then on a bumpy dirt road to a lookout point over the oasis. In this landscape the oasis has a bit of a different character, because the rocks of the mountains here are from volcanic rocks. Of course, we made some nice pictures here. After that we drove down to the valley, towards the oasis. Here we continued by foot and walked through the oasis with a local guide, along the river (which is on low tide now) through the old village. This is the village where the local guide was born, and he showed us the inside of this house, which was a unique experience! Across from this village there's the new village. This is where the guide lives now. In this same village we had tea at a local family's home to close off this nice trip. Next we got back in the jeep and drove to a restaurant where we had lunch in the garden of the restaurant. After lunch we got in the bus, which picked us up from here and drove us to the hotel. Once we arrived at the hotel we had (a bit too much of) a refreshing dive in the swimming pool. After a while we went back to the room to change clothes and go for a walk. For this walk we could have gone to the kasbah (paid access) in the old part of the city, but we chose to go to the old synagogue. This synagogue is 500 years old and doesn't serve as a synagogue anymore, because there are no Jewish people in the area anymore. All the Jewish people live in the big cities in the north of Morocco. Currently, this synagogue serves as some sort of museum, run by two brothers who took it over from their (Jewish) grandfather (of 90 years old). The youngest of two brothers (just 25 years old) gave us a private tour inside the synagogue, which looks bigger from the inside than from the outside (on the inside it looks like a labyrinth!). The synagogue bulged out of all the Jewish objects that came from Berber Jews from the region. A little fun fact: an Israeli minister visited this synagogue last June and signed the guest book. To close off this tour we had some tea together with the tour guide of the museum and talked a bit with him. Next we went back to the hotel to have dinner and to close off the day. Tomorrow we are already heading towards Marrakesh to spend the last days of the vacation in that region, tomorrow more about this! :)

Days 7 and 8

Travel overview

Day 10