Friday, April 30, 2010

The middle Atlas

The mountain range in Morroco is called the Atlas mountains with Mt Toukbal being the highest peak. Middle Atlas is lush and at the same time rugged. Spring is the best time to visit, there is the water from the rain and he snow melt and the whole place is covered with wild flowers. I never saw anything like it. Summer time can get extremely hot. The grass dies and everything is brown. It is so similar to Southern California. There is a lot of sheep grazing everywhere but we never tire of taking their pictures.Once in a while our driver stops for us to take pictures, otherwise most of them are taken from the moving taxi. We couldn't communicate with him what we like to see. Of course we can ask him to stop and he does.The trees are beginning to sprout leaves and a lot are blossoming. It's an incredible sight.All roads lead to Marrakech, it seems. One take the overland route to get to Marrakech from Fes or do what we did, take the train to Casablanca and then on to Marrakech. It takes 7 hours by train.I forgot why we stopped, Oh, I think I know, our driver thought we would like to look at the roadside stalls that were selling Morrocan pottery but instead we found this patch of orange colored flowers more interesting. Driving out from Fes we passed some beautiful farms, olive trees, vegetable gardens and those glorious wild flowers. So here we are up close to a patch of them and we go hog wild. Little did we know we would see more and more as the trip progressed.There's a certain beauty to this ruggedness.I said to Sophie, 'take it from this angle, it'll give the impression of a bigger patch of flowers than it really is'. Little did I know I didn't have to do that because later in the trip we would be in huge fields of wild flowers and we would see so much more. Wow, what a beautiful countryside!This is Sophie's picture, we've merged our work, she took pictures of me and I have pictures of her. Isn't this cute, quaint and refreshing, Sophie's pic again.Again Sophie's.Sophie's pic, again. Looking at these pictures again brings back haunting memories. I've yet to see anything so beautiful. I thought Sicilian Spring was amazing. This tops it!

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