A great day in the Todra Gorge

 We have had a great day filled with laughs. These are the days on sabbatical I love the most. Not because we did or saw anything particularly remarkable, but we are now fully decompressed from our normal lives and this is when we slip into really silly and funny. The intimacy of being just us 6. The jokes only we get. The experiences only we will share. Pure gold. We laughed all day at the photos and videos of yesterday’s camel ride. Gold for a lifetime. We laughed about sand in our hair, tea leaves in our mouths, and just one more meal of tagine. Morocco has been a great launch for our summer together and I will always remember these days and smile.

We left Merzouga and the sand dunes this morning with a quick stop to view fossils found in this region. As this area was once under the ocean the examples were plentiful. 

We continued through a stone desert to the Todra Gorge. Free climber, Alex Honnold referred to it as “the Yosemite of Morocco”. We were able to take a nice walk along the spring fed river and I did expect to see climbers on the rock face. Adelaide and I had a quick chat about the possibility of flash flood because it is so narrow and high, which apparently is a real risk in August and September. It was beautiful. I am sure Alastair wished he had his fly rod as he spotted several fish. 

Our guide led  us through town and into some of the farming plots irrigated by the river. I loved this! We walked along a man made narrow path which was the top side of the irrigation trough. The water runs down the center of the fields through the trough. Each family is given two days a week when they can divert the water to their crops. I saw barley and corn mostly but their were also fig, pomegranate, walnut, and almond trees.

We had dinner and played Rook, but mostly we laughed.

Jll