January 6: Ouarzazate to Marrakesh over the High Atlas and the Tizi n'Tichka Pass

The drive across the High Atlas was littered with spectacular views and sights.
It really looks amazing when you're right in it.	Trying to do the Mustafa-pose (recall the Dakar page), perhaps he would just laugh if he saw this.
While in the Dades Valley there were a massive number of entrepreneurs holding boxes of dates into the path of oncoming cars, here these guys would hold a round object and then open it up right when you passed them. Just like with the dates, you had to actually stop to see what it was. Here we found out that these were mineral crystals embedded in a regular rock.
We reached the top of the pass and there we bought an amazing mineral rock and a telobyte (see below).
	And here is a tip for future travelers to Morocco -- bring plenty of ballpoint pens (stylos), you can trade all kinds of things for them. They are very rare in Morocco (even at the airport and the hotel) and they make great presents, too. Look at this happy little girl whom Akiko gave one of our two stylos. The other we traded for some gemstones with the guy on the pass. The kids need them for school.
Down  the High Atlas to Marrakesh.	And can you believe it, after 2000 km of driving across the bumpiest (off-) roads, we had a flat just 10 km away from Marrakesh. Looking at the tire later, there were dozens of rubber plugs already in it - nothing gets wasted in Morocco.
When arriving in Marrakesh, a very large city where the main rule of traffic is "You see me, you avoid me", we found the map in the 'Rough Guide' highly inadequate. Asking people for directions was not of great help either, since nobody could read the map and the directions were always conflicting (we did get a good tour of the city that way). A moped driver offered us to guide us to the place where we wanted to drop off the rental car. It started to rain heavil, but he kept going (see pictures above, taken while desperately trying to keep up with the guy). We actually made it to 'First Car Rental' and gave him a good tip for his efforts. We also came across a McDonalds and finally had the McArabia (see billboard), the McDonalds attempt of a falafel coming soon to a restaurant near you. I may avoid it when it does.
	For the first time, we were unable to find a scenic hotel. All hotels listed in our guidebooks were booked. We must have looked really shabby, since the car rental lady sent us to a very unspectacular place. Later, at a cyber cafe, google pointed us to a nice riad (a riad is a private residence converted into a hotel. It is THE craze in Morocco right now). Click here to see Akiko smile again.