Morocco (5) – TRAVICARIOUS

This was the bathroom of the hotel in Erfoud displaying the fossils the area is famous for. I think they were fakes and it made it very difficult to actually use the counter for anything.

We couldn’t help ourselves from getting on this camel before we left town.

Just a normal day heading toward Boulmalne Dades. The locals seem to do a lot of walking, biking and burro-ing.

There were several long bus rides, but we stopped enough and always had snacks.

Here we were on the Tinjdad Road where we stopped to see the Todgha Canyons towering 800 feet overhead.

On the way to the canyon, we could see the black clouds forming.

And it finally rained.

These are the Monkey Fingers mountains. We spent several driving hours out of the way to see these. Don’t think it was worth it. This is the Moroccan flag.

A local woman was gathering these flowers and putting them in a bag for transport for some reason.

Here’s another rustic hotel room. But at least they all had kettles to boil water for coffee every morning. Look at that step into the bathroom — accident waiting to happen!

This town had a yearly rose festival, and roses are their livelihood and make them famous. Even their taxis are painted pink in honor of the roses. They export tons of rose essence. It requires 4,000 kilograms of rose petals to make one kilogram of pure rose oil.

An entrepreneur started Atlas Film Studio in the town of Quarzazate in 1983 and it’s still going strong here in Morocco. Since then, the Atlas Studios has been used as a shooting location for famous movies like Gladiator, The Mummy, Game of Thrones, The Passion of the Christ, Prince of Persia, Babel, Star Wars, Kundun, Asterix & Obelix and many more. Enormous sets have been built to represent places like Jerusalem, Tibet or ancient Egypt.

This is a fake plane and a fake porsche which is cheaper than using a real one.

Here is china, Egypt, Rome, Bethlehem, Greece and the tour guide showing how it looks to pick up a huge rock and why it’s so light.

Everything is very flimsy and fake, except where the actors have to walk. These steps are very strong since Tom Cruise may use them and insurance companies have to pay $millions if an actor gets hurt and can’t act.

Here’s the back of a city.

Snow covered mountain. Again, I did not sign up for that. This is Africa. I didn’t think it snowed in Africa!

The fake Egypt doesn’t hold up well in rain. So repairs were being made after the light rain a couple days ago. Thank goodness the country doesn’t get much rain.