The little big adventure

Today started with smoke.

Something woke me at 7.15 and I stumbled out onto the terrace in the direction of the bathroom. Is it foggy? What's that smell? One of the other guests wandered past and mentioned that the kitchen might be on fire...not great when we're two floors up with only one exit. We grabbed some clothes and headed down the stairs (more billowing smoke) and then watched as the staff wandered in and out of the black smoke looking a bit confused. Eventually someone put it out, but the whole restaurant was blackened, so the entire contents have been out in the road being scrubbed, while the inside in repainted.

After that, nothing too exciting for a few hours.

Then we decided - as S was feeling a bit better - to head off on our search for Paradise Valley, somewhere in the foothills of the Anti-Atlas. We'd tried a few days ago and ended up down a dirt road in a tiny village, now we knew where we'd gone wrong. The road was marked on google maps so it must carry on past the muddy bit we'd stopped at before...

We wound our way up to the end of the tarmac road and then headed straight on where previously we went left.

The road was dry mud for a mile or two.

When it changed to large size gravel we wished for the mud.

When the gravel became driving up a sort of staircase of rock layers we wished for the gravel.

When the gravel returned and became a car with track winding around the side of a 500ft drop, we wished for the stairs.

When the 'track of death' became the equivalent of driving up a garden rockery we wished we could just get out of there.

Then amongst the rockery we found a place where a stream ran under the road - the road surface collapsed and the car got stuck.

Ten minutes of swearing, getting bitten by something on a rock I picked up, and dropping rocks into the hole under the wheel and we were finally on our way again.

More rockery, then finally gravel, beautiful gravel and then manna - a tarmac road in the distance. By this time the exhaust was sounding a bit loose on the hire car. Three hours had passed - almost all of it in 1st and 2nd and almost all at less than running pace.

We'd decided by now that Paradise Valley was one of Lonely Planet's great map cockups...and so it proved when we found Paradise Valley on the way back along the tarmac 'main' road towards Aourir. It was beautiful in the dusk, but even here there were increasing amounts of rubble across the road. We finally came down to where the road crosses the river and realised the road wasn't there anymore. It had washed away in the recent floods (according to the Moroccan's we gave a lift back up the hill to the village).

So no quick exit from the mountains. Back the way we had come, past the crazy dirt track, up to the junction at Imouzzer and then more winding (tarmac!) roads over more hills, with more vertical drops and no barriers, in the dark.

Finally made it to the main dual carriageway to Agadir and then round the ringroad, dodging the various unlit car/bikes/pedestrians with a suicide wish.

Managed to bag a last fish dinner at the bar next door.

Sleep now.