Mint Tea & Tagine

Time to move on after a wonderful lunch……

….. Fossils……

This area is full of them and you see them being sold all along the roadside in all shapes and sizes. We visited an area with fossils beds, where natural fossils, millions of years-old are found. I am certainly not a geology expert of any sort and don’t know a helluva lot about fossils so wont go into it. It was pretty amazing to see them though and the kids (and their parents) had great fun looking for and picking up little pieces that were strewn around. Here is a link where you can read more about the fossils if you are interested.

There are a couple of eerie ruins of old French and Arabic towns in the area where mining was done.

There are several Ksar’s in the area (of varying standards I believe), all competing for the tourists that venture this way. They are largely constructed of hay and “mud” from the lake. We passed several that had quite clearly been built under the “floodline” and had basically just disintegrated. I suppose when you build here, flooding is not exactly the first thing on your mind in an area that in some years has no rainfall!

Next up was a little lesson in desert irrigation systems. The town’s water is supplied in a very well organised system of wells and canals. These run between the palm wadi’s (sp?) and villages. These palm oases (wadi’s) are very interesting as there are sections which are allocated to different families for planting. The irrigation is organised that some get water in the day during one week and others at night so that it is fairly distributed.

We spent the night at the lovely Ksar Bicha. A wonderful place at the foot of the dunes, with helpful staff, a very inviting salon, air conditioning and the all essential swimming pool!

And of course, the necessary lessons on how to put your scarf around your head!

We had an excellent dinner again, of Moroccan salads, Harira and guess what….Kalia….I am sure you are wondering how I could possibly have the same dish three times in a row but I find the variations on recipes here fascinating. The Harira here for example contained no chickpeas as it does elsewhere and the Kalia was heavily spiced with cumin.