A reader tells of his adventures with his wife travelling through Morocco on a tour-bus.

We had an amazing time in Morocco. It's a varied country with flat arid desert, lush greenery, Grand Canyon type gorges and lovely mountains. We pretty much had a fantastic day every single day and the rest of the tour group were fantastic.

The Sahara trip was amazing. Our hotel was right on the edge of the dunes and was a one story elaborate mud hotel! The whole thing really was made of mud and straw but it had electricity, running water, 20 individual rooms and was quite swanky.  Typically though, not long after we arrived (late evening) it started to rain! That was one thing I hadn't even considered in the desert. The next morning we had some free time, so being a tiny bit adventurous I headed out into the sand dunes by myself. I got a good mile or so into them (always keeping a note on where our hotel was though) and it was simply incredible. There was absolute stillness and silence. On my way back to the hotel however, that was ruined by a little kid who had somehow ridden his bike over the dunes, from a camp that I'd seen in the distance, to ask me if I wanted to buy some fossils from him!
Later that day we did a two hour camel trek deep into the Sahara, so much so that the only thing you could see around you was sand. One of our party hated it, and the whole camel train had to stop because they thought she was going to fall off as she was so unbalanced. Sleeping in the desert was a great experience as was watching the sun rise the next day. Camels are hell to ride though and everybody suffered from stiff joints and sore bottoms for the the next few days.

Leaving the desert wasn't much fun though. On a very long, straight stretch of road, our tour bus ran into a kid who was playing chicken with the bus. There was a massive thud as we hit him and the bus screeched to a halt, throwing a few people out of their seats. The kid had been thrown several feet away from the bus and was lying on a very stony piece of land. Luckily, we had two nurses and a doctor on board who rushed to help him. They were very concerned though and really thought he may die. All of the locals from the village gathered round. In the meantime, our tour guide and driver had gone off in the first car they'd seen to try and get help, leaving 16 tourists by themselves in a strange country. We were a tiny bit concerned for our safety.

 We had a nervous 40 minute wait until the ambulance came (that was little more than a Ford Escort van) and a further 30 minutes to our tour guide came back. During this time, a man (fairly old) had been making phone calls to people, looking quite agitated. We later learned that he was the boy's father and he was calling the local governor. The boy's father was very jolly a bit later, laughing and joking. Our tour guide explained that Muslims believe in fate, so that if it was fated by Allah that his son was going to die, he wouldn't be sad.

The only thing that the boy's father was annoyed about was that we were being inconvenienced as we couldn't go until the police came! The police did finally come, took a few measurements etc, and asked us to go to the local police station (20km away) to officially report the incident. Once we got there, we waited outside while the tour guide went in. The policemen who had gone to the scene later pulled up in a garbage truck! Our tour guide explained that this police station (and this was a moderately modern town) didn't have their own police vehicles and had to hitch a lift to the scene which is why they were so long in coming! We later learned that the little boy was OK. He'd broken his arm and suffered a cracked skull but shouldn't have any long term injuries.

After the tour bus had hit the child and went to the police station, we were quite behind on our schedule. Luckily, that day had been listed as a lazy afternoon so we didn't really miss much. We had lunch at about 4:30pm then drove a short way to our hotel, which was going to be at the base of the Todra Gorge. We drove through a lovely village with winding roads down to the gorge, then over a bit of a bumpy road until we got to a normal concrete road again. The road seemed pretty straight from here but it also veered off on a rough gravel track through a stream. We saw a car stopped in the stream with men behind it. We were going very slowly and the men started to wave at us. We assumed they wanted a push. In fact, they were washing their car and were signaling to us that the road ahead had collapsed! That should have been our first clue. 
The hotel we stayed at was quite lovely, we had to cross a gentle, clear running stream via a makeshift plank to get to it. It was built into the rockface with a sheer, vertical cliff behind it. We had a good evening meal later that day. The female doctor who helped the kid earlier was celebrating her 40th birthday today. 

The next morning, it was lovely and sunny and we started a 4 hour walk through the gorge and then up to the summit and eventually back down. The best way to describe the gorge is like a mini Grand Canyon. Our hotel was in a fairly wide part of the gorge, but further down it narrowed quite a bit, then opened up again into a wide area which contained a couple of restaurants, hotels and a shop. We had lunch and were preparing to go when it started to rain. It then got heavier and heavier until hail the size of large stones came down. It was quite fascinating to watch. One of the guys then started pointing. I looked to see at what and it was several waterfalls that had started to pour over the side of the gorge in front of us. Picture the big waterfall at Yosemite, but several of them, and you'll get the idea.

As the rain started to fall, these got muddier and heavier. The river by this time was a raging torrent of muddy water, gushing out of the narrow part of the gorge. Although it was rising, we were in a wide part of the gorge and just about high enough that it didn't reach street level. Most of our group had headed inside the restaurant to take cover. I went out wandering to look around and get some video. I didn't think we were in any danger but I saw many tourists being pulled out of the raging river, covered from head to toe, visibly shaken. I then also saw our tour group rush from the restaurant. Apparently, water had started pouring through the back of the restaurant to the front, forcing them to flee. 
Our tour group was asking why we weren't leaving (as the river hadn't come up to road level) but the guide explained that we were cut off by the river on the road ahead, so we were stuck in this quarter mile stretch until further notice. Luckily for us, he arranged accommodation and a communal room at a basic hotel so we had somewhere to spend the night. The rain kept coming and going for the remainder of the day and night. It worsened in the evening, this time actually rising onto the street level and very nearly to front of the hotel we were at. There was also the best thunder storm that I've ever seen. For three solid hours, lightning lit up the sky above us and beyond the gorge. It was constant, sometimes there was a bit of rain but for the most part, it was just dry lightning and was spectacular. 
We were very lucky, we heard that there were people trapped in caves and on patches of island type areas who were cut off from everything so were trapped out in the elements from noon of that day until about 7am of the next. We also heard how some tourists on motorcycles had had their bikes washed away from them as they were riding through the gorge when the flash flood started.
Locals said that there had been a bit of rain about 10 days ago, that had washed away some of the road that we were trying to come in on, but nothing like this had happened for 25 years. We met some of the people who had been trapped overnight. They seemed OK and said they'd managed to get a fire going. 
The next morning, we had to wade across the river (still very muddy and much lower than it was) to walk back to our original hotel and collect our bags. Our hotel was a fair bit higher than the river but the water had reached the lower levels and it looked a mess. We were staying on the ground floor. Luckily, hotel staff had moved our things. We then had to quickly gather up our stuff, walk back to the emergency hotel we'd been staying at by wading back through the river again. Fiona and I did this unaided but a lot of the group had assistance from the locals. Some locals were genuinely trying to help but others muscled them out of the way. These locals then demanded payment for their services and it all turned very nasty when our tour guide either refused to pay them or didn't pay them enough. Once again, a fight almost broke out with one angry local rushing off to grab a big rock and was going to hurl it at our tour guide, who was getting very aggressive himself. Locals kept the two apart and the rock wasn't thrown but it was again another scary incident, immediately right in front of us. When we did finally leave, half of the road had also collapsed the previous night. Luckily though, there was enough road left for us to get through.

Another thing about our Morocco trip was that there was a lot of aggression. We were there during Ramadan so understood that the tour guide and locals may be flagging from lack of food. In fact, our tour guide was full of energy and all of the walks we did, climbing up mountains etc, he did without breaking a sweat. He took no water or food as per his religion. We were all truly exhausted and had to stop on a regular basis to drink.  At one point in a city we witnessed two people in traffic who had stopped their cars and were almost coming to blows. A policeman was there trying to break it up but they paid scant attention to him and kept trying to go for each other. They all drive like madmen and take no notice of traffic lights, pedestrian crossings, signs etc.
We also had a tour around the alleyways of Fes. Fes was a wonderful old place full of 9000 plus maze like alleys. Most of these alleys were just wide enough to fit two people next to each other side by side. There were shops in the alcoves and many, many people going about their daily business. It was claustrophobic to say the least. On top of all this, you had to contend with people pushing carts down these alleys with their wares and heavily laden mules (and there were lots of these) trying to all get from point A to B. Our tour group of 16 had a hard enough time sticking together. After turning one corner, two men carrying stuff had bumped into one another (easily done given the lack of space) and started fighting. They really were hitting each other and a crowd started to gather, some to watch others to break it up. Fiona and I were at the back with two others in the group and had been cut off from the rest, who I think were wandering ahead oblivious. Luckily, Fiona and the other ladies were out of harms way but I ducked into an alcove (couldn't go back any further) & was so close to the action that I could have joined in if I stretched a little bit. They were getting closer to me all the time but, luckily enough, they stopped their fight before it affected me.