We opened Kaya’s blinds to another glorious day. Yeah, it’s time to drive the Dades Gorge. All traces of my headache have gone and I’m feeling chipper and tip-top again.
We really wanted to set off on time today but as usual we were 10 minutes late……it’s still a REALLY good day!
We stopped to top up Kaya and Boris and from the fill we see that Boris uses less fuel. We’re now rated to 4.1t and Boris at 3.85t although I don’t think that we are either at our max weights. The difference in usage is not huge but it is different ….especially at altitude. It calculates at a touch over 1mile/gallon. Not something that’s worrying us, we have to admit and something that we totally expected.
By around 10:30am we had entered the gorge. The morning shadows were still deep and long and given a choice we’d definitely enter the gorge later in the day – maybe around noon when the sun is a little higher in the sky to caste less shadow. But it is still an amazing sight to see.
A note of interest: oudi is pronounced wadi – “ou” in Arabic is pronounced as a “w”, so that also makes Ouarzazate (our stop at the end of the day), Warzazatey – I’m here all week *bows*
The gorge is made up of loads of oudi that funnel the mountain water runoff into the river at the bottom of the gorge.
It’s pretty scary as you’re driving through the gorge to see the man-made oudi (currently dry, thank goodness!) waiting to lead the water between the houses, some smaller others wide, wider than 50m across. What it must be to be living in one of those houses watching the ferocity of the water crashing right passed your doors and windows, knowing that there is nothing between you and the raging beast except a small concrete wall. But it is this uncontrolled rush and flow of water that has created the beautiful and magnificent gorge along with the range of rock formation that you pass as you drive up it.
The most spectacular display is the Doigts de Singe (Monkey Fingers).
We hit the switchbacks that would take up to the top of the gorge whilst they were still pretty deep in shadow but really wanted a record of us driving it. So Andrea and Paul stopped up at the top while we went back down and slowly drove back up and they videoed and photographed us. Box ticked. Then we swapped over for us to do the same for them.
Then it was a slow drive back down the gorge and across to Ouarzazate for our next stop.
End of Act 118 scene 159
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