For the four days we spent walking around Marrakech's old city, young men on scooters were a scourge. They tore through the narrow streets of the medina like bats out of hell, whizzing past our shoulders, slicing a path through the crowd with a swashbuckling disregard for public safety.
Our Airbnb host Didier said there were seven scooter crashes in and around Marrakech every day.
To embark on the next leg of our journey, we brave the traffic along the Route des Remparts to drive south-west towards Essaouira.
Kamikaze scooters are everywhere, overtaking, undertaking, cutting in, weaving out, doing crazy, dangerous stuff.
An hour and a half later, the traffic is thin, with very few scooters, as we wind through desiccated hills towards the Atlantic coast.
We pull in to the Khmissa Argan. This is a hamlet of small buildings where Argan oil is produced and sold.
In a room resplendent with Berber carpets and cushions, a group of old women sits patiently hand-crushing the nuts and extracting the precious oil that is used in cosmetics and cooking.
The nuggety Argan tree, with its long, needle-sharp thorns and dusty-green leaves, populates the gullies and ravines of this arid landscape.
Argan oil is a huge domestic and export industry and an economic boon for this part of Morocco.
Goats climbing in the trees, deftly avoiding the thorns to gorge on the little green nut, has become something of an iconic Moroccan image.
An hour and a half later, the traffic is thin, with very few scooters, as we wind through desiccated hills towards the Atlantic coast.
We pull in to the Khmissa Argan. This is a hamlet of small buildings where Argan oil is produced and sold.
In a room resplendent with Berber carpets and cushions, a group of old women sits patiently hand-crushing the nuts and extracting the precious oil that is used in cosmetics and cooking.
The nuggety Argan tree, with its long, needle-sharp thorns and dusty-green leaves, populates the gullies and ravines of this arid landscape.
Argan oil is a huge domestic and export industry and an economic boon for this part of Morocco.
Goats climbing in the trees, deftly avoiding the thorns to gorge on the little green nut, has become something of an iconic Moroccan image.
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| a Moroccan industry dominated by women, both in production and distribution |
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| providing valuable employment for village women |
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| the Argan tree |
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| photo courtesy Google images |
Your pictures, Tony, are very colorful.
ReplyDeleteI have seen photos of goats perched high in those trees, munching on foliage or nuts. How they get up there is beyond me.
Tony, good idea to have added to your post a photo showing goats perched up in Argan trees. It's probably one of those I've seen. It is spectacular!
Deletethanks chm. I value your feedback and appreciate you regularly reading my blog. Do you have your own blog for me to read?
DeleteNo Tony, I don't have a blog, because I don't have anything interesting to tell. However, I comment regularly on two blogs that I read and enjoy daily, just as yours. One is Ken's, and the other one you might be interested in looking at is Days on the Claise, written by Susan and Simon, two Australians living in the Touraine.
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