Driving west from Merzuga to Marrakesh will take about 7 hours. We decided to make a stop at Aït Ben Haddou near Ouarzazate in Morocco,
to split up the driving. This town is known to be the town they made the movie "Gladiator".
Halfway through the route, we encountered our first flood. The sudden rainfall flooded a town from the outskirt. We passed through without
any problems because the flood is static. But ..... about 30 minutes after the town, we hit our first road block.
First of all, we started noticing a noise coming from the bottom of our car. We stopped and discovered that the protective panel was broken, and
being hung halfway up, dragging the other half on the ground. It wa probably caused by the flood ealier. As we stopped for
our first fast flood road block. The runoffs from the rain just flooded a 50 metres section of the road. Almost all cars stopped, except the
big lorry trucks. We waited the water to retreat, for about 1 hour. During that time, we debated what we should do, estimated what kind of
damages we could have if we chose to run the car through. It's kinda of exciting !
At the end, we got through 3 of the deep floods without any problems. The only problem was that we lost a total of 2.5 hours daytime. We had
to drive at night. Yes it was quite dangerous. Roads were dark, wet, filled with potholes and sometimes covered by water. We couldn't really
see much. At the end, we arrived at our hotel only 3 hours late - safe !
Local people still collect tree branches as fuel.
First flood we saw at town.
It's about 1 feet deep.
This was the flooded section of the road that we waited about 1 hour to cross.
I guess these flood signs really mean something in this country !
What else can we do but wait ?
Big trucks went through fine.
Water was running quite fast indeed.
Time to dig out the jack ... to do what ...
While all of us were waiting, people were arguing and debating how long it will take the water to retreat
Ahh .. the bottom panel, we decided to just pry it off, instead of dragging through the water.
haha... what a POS car, ... BTW, it's french ... Peugeot.
Time to go, lower the car please !.
Some villagers had little patience, ....
Look carefully, you dont want to be the dead goat, ....lower left corner
Perhaps they had seen it all the time. Not big deal, we will just take the bike across !
Hmm, go or not go ?.
We played with a few village kids while we were waiting ....
Our appetizers at the Riad at Ait Ben Haddou, our first meal since that morning.
The morning view from the Riad
I particularly liked this Riad.
The blue sky really allured me that day, after a whole day of rain.
This is a rock at the hotel check-in counter, ... the carving represent the regional terrain. People built their houses on the slopes with rock and mud.
Donkey was still an important means of transportation.
Who are they ?
Look like the rock carving, huh ? Doesn't it ?
These are real houses, people do live in there.
They are not just built for movie shooting
See... people were fixing their roofs.
This abandoned (original) house is located at the top of this hill.
This POS Peugeot doesnt even have a sturdy handy bar !
We ran into the Racing Team while we were traversing the Gorges going towards Marrakesh.
Man, ...seriously, we passed by many of these women carrying loads of something.
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