Morocco Day 5 & 6: Fort Bou Jerif

Mine and Charmaine's room at the Fort

A view of the pre-Sahara desert. We were in the middle of nowhere!

Our pool (although it was too chilly for swimming)

A lounge area near the pool

Tents if you want to rugged option

We saw endless amounts of cactus

I found a shack in the desert and inside was...

sheep and goats

This is where our water came from. A well.

The original fort

A view from the fort of the valley

A tree graffiti in the fort

My mom hopped for a ride on the tree

I used my super-human strength to hold this tree up

Mom also remembered to stop and smell the flowers

A small stream with very noisy and silly sounding frogs

A delicious tagine dinner

The snake charmer playing his flute

He made the cobra dance

There were 2 cobra's and 3 vipers

I got to enjoy the cobra around my neck!

The snake came a little too close for Mom and Dad

Calm after the snake storm

I forgot to mention, I was attacked by a massive scorpion and was in his death grip!

Where we stayed.

I was ready to jump into the gorge. 

Now here was a true adventure! After leaving Tafraoute, we were going to our rugged destination of Fort Bou Jarif. This was for sure what you would call the off-beaten path. After driving some distance on a regular road, we suddenly turned onto an unpaved desert road, and started driving out into the middle of the pre-Sahara desert. The path became very rocky and we were being tossed all around the car on this insane road. There was literally nothing in sight except for cactus and sand. We were driving into the middle of the desert nowhere. After driving about 9 kilometers and being shaken and stirred like a martini, we saw signs for our Fort Bou Jarif destination.When we arrived and got out of the car, we heard a hissing noise, and low and behold, the tire of the car had a hole in it and was beginning to deflate. My mom was panicked because we were far far out in the desert, and she was worried about how we would get out. Fortunately there was a spare and our driver, Abdel, was able to go back to the town to get in repaired.While he ventured out for that mission, we had a mission of our own. After checking out the grounds, we began to explore the desert and our surroundings. We saw some cactus and desert flowers, an old shack that housed some animals, and some animal bones. We than began to venture further and found a path which lead to the original Bou Jarif Fort. We followed the path to the fort, and began to explore the inside of the fort. The fort was obviously falling apart inside, so some parts were hard to get through.

At the back end of the fort, there was a look out, which showed a valley below, with some water below. So, my parents and I ventured down there, and followed the path to the water.

The stream was pretty awesome as well. There were tons on frogs, all of which made ridiculous sounds which my mom really enjoyed imitating. She said they sounded like the three stooges. Silly!

We walked back and prepared for dinner, which was also tagine, the national dish of Morocco. This meal was absolutely amazing though. The meat was prepared perfectly, and we even got soup and vegetables, so it was our first were well balanced meal. Delicious!

So, the very exciting part happened after dinner. We got to watch a snake charmer. He had 2 cobras and 3 vipers. He began by playing the flute to summon the first cobra, but it was being stubborn and not coming out of the box. So, he pulled it out and started drumming to kind of make it dance. Then, he took the 3 vipers out of the other box and put them on the ground too. While taken the vipers out, one of the cobras began to make its way towards us, which absolutely freaked out my parents and Charmaine. My dad actually jumped up onto the couch in fear. It was absolutely hysterical. We watched more of the show and listened to the snakes evil hiss. At the end, I got to hold the cobra, which was awesome!

After this insane and thrilling snake show, we had some tea and got ready for bed. We didn't know that it was lights out at 11pm, and the power was cut, and believe me, it was pitch black. We fortunately had a candle in our room to light, as we dozed off to sleep.

We woke up the next day and had a nice breakfast, and cautiously made our way further through the desert, in hopes of safely making it to our next destination.