Tinghir – 5/22/2013

5/22/2013 – Tinghir

Another longish day, waking up in the camel tent and getting on the road around 10 AM, we drove mostly through the desert to the city of Tinghir. Tinghir is home to both some stunning palmeries and is the entrance point to the road leading to one of two stunning gorges here, the Todra Gorge.

We had one of those experiences in Tinghir that can totally derail a trip and is definately worth recounting since it shows the kind of peolple we encountered in Morocco….we were just getting into town and started toward the gorge when we saw a wide viewpoint with a nice view of the palmeries in the valley, we pulled over to take a look and snap a couple of photos. When we got back in the car, Steve went to turn the electronic key in the ignition and it the key completely fell apart. No matter what we did, putting it back together or trying it in peices, the car would not start. Essentially, we were at the edge of a cliff, several miles from town, and we were stuck. There was a very friendly gentleman with two camels sitting at the same viewpoint offering people camel trips up the gorge. Given my experience with camel-but which had just ended that very moring, I was not overly tempted….he took an interest in why we weren’t going anywhere, and using our very limited French vocabulary, we managed to tell him that our key was broken and our car wouldn’t start. He had a cell phone (of course) and offered to call (we thought) a cab for us to take us to our hotel. Although this seemed better than sitting at the edge of the cliff indefinately, we were still quite a ways from our hotel and god only knows how far from the nearest Europecar. Our schedule was to travel for the next several days, so we were pretty concerned. After about half-an-hour, a motor bike pulled up next to the car with two men on it. Given the fact that there were two of us plus all of our luggage, we were a bit discouraged until we realized that one of the men was a mechanic. He looked at the key, got in the car, and started it up in about 5-seconds. He managed to communicate to us that he would need to take the key back to his shop to properly fix it. We were willing to do just about anything he said at this point so we nodded, and he promptly got back in the driver’s seat and drove us to his shop which was on the other side of town. While he was gerryrigging the key, two other shop attendants entertained us, asked us questions about America, and made us tea. They were incredibly friendly and using our broken French and their broken English, we managed to communicate about several topics fairly well. When we reached an impasse during a coversation about a gigantic Fiat truck in their shop, the key-fixer stopped his work to look up the translation on babblefish. (It was a state vehicle). About half an hour after arrival at the shop, our key was glued back together nicely and working, and we took a couple pictures of the gang, promised to like the mechanic and his shop on facebook, and headed on our merry way! Wow! He only charged us about $20 for this entire service….but we gave him a bit extra!

Anyway, this turned out to be a great day because we were so relieved and gladdened by the way we had been treated. We checked into our lovely riad, Riad Timadrouine went back to see the gorge, and were invited by the French owners of our riad to pre-dinner drinks and conversation. They were very interesting and well-travelled and offered to take us for a ride the next morning to see their favorite part of the area, which tourists don’t typically know about. One thing that should be obvious, but is worth stating, is that you really can’t go wrong with a French hotel proprieter. The service and rooms are always fantastic and the food, well…the food was absolutely fabulous. We had dinner in the riad and they served us up an amazing meal with hints of Moroccan and French cusine as well as introducing us to the best Moroccan wine we have found.

The next day after a delighful breakfast on the terrace, Phillipe and Hannah took us to a secret gorge area which was beautiful and off the map. We stopped to visit a Berber family who lived in caves built into the rock. The husbands were away with the livestock, since there was very little water there, but the women and children were there and let us peek at their caves and even take a couple of pictures of the children. They were quite friendly and it really was a fascinating experience. We were sad to leave Tinghir and Riad Timagrouine the next day. Phillipe and Hannah were such amazing hosts, we hope to have the chance to visit them again in the future!