Driving to Dadès Gorge

January 8^th, 2025

The plan today was to drive to Dadès Gorge, only about a 2½ hour drive so I wasn’t in a big rush to leave in the morning.  I was planning on a small sidetrack to check out a solar power station, about 10 kilometres to the east of Ouarzazate. 

The Ouarzazate Solar Power Station, also known as the Noor Power Station, is not just a huge farm of solar panels which generates around 72 MW of electricity (1 MW can power between 200-1000 homes) but it is also a “concentrated solar power plant” (CSP).  In fact, it is the biggest CSP in the world generating 510 MW!  The whole plant covers around 3000 hectares.

Getting closer...

A CSP uses thousands of mirrors that are all focused on bouncing the suns rays to a central tower where molten salt is heated up which in turn is used in a steam generator to produce steam to create electricity.

Look at all of those mirrors.

This is a stock photo I found of the mirrors at another CSP.

It was pretty intense.

It was bright to look at, even with my sunglasses.

The obligatory Octi pic.

I’ve flown near one of these in a commercial jet near Las Vegas and they are impressive to see them from the sky, but I’ve never been this close to one on the ground.  It is gobsmacking.  Such incredible technology.

This is what a CSP (not this one) looks like from above.

A 360 view of the area.

Back on the road, I had contemplated stopping to check out Kasbah Amridil, another 50 kilometres down the highway.  Yesterday, my tour guide Shareed at Kasbah Taourirt had mentioned it a few times and it used to be on the 50-dirham bank note.  However, it was after 2 pm by the time I reached it, and I decided to just snap a few photos from the outside and continue on.  I hadn’t even had lunch yet…and I think I was “kasbah-ed out”.

Kasbah Amridil.

Some random abandoned building by the highway.

Some random camels feeding by the road (there's one on the right that's not as obvious as the one in the middle...there were 5 or 6 of them)

The mountain range stretches for 100s of kilometres.

A cop car with its lights flashing came towards me, in the middle of the road.  He signalled with his hand for me to pull over as he passed by...and here's why.  A couple of military tanks were being transported by some big trucks.

Into some hills at the end of the plains.

Some strange looking rocks.  There was a campground called "Monkey fingers" in French...I guess that's what someone thinks they look like.

There are a couple of abandoned buildings hiding in the middle of the photo.

Some other building hiding in the hillside.

As I neared the campground that I had selected for the night, there was one sweet section of switchbacks that I enjoyed driving up.

Starting up the windy road.

Part way up the switchbacks.

Looking back from where I came from.

Octi's handling it fine.

Reaching the top.

Impressive roadwork.

The Dadès River is somewhere, deep in that crack.

That's a hotel just above the middle of the photo...seems like a remote spot.

The campsite was owned by a hippy-ish Swiss woman named Aya who was super friendly.  The place was nestled in a narrow valley with the Dadès River flowing right beside it.

The campground.

This is the restaurant, but I had some food in the van so I never ventured inside.

I was offered some tea and as I sat down to enjoy that, a Swedish man showed up in his rental car.  We chatted for a bit until his family, who had walked through the main part of Dadès Gorge, joined us for a short visit.  They were doing a daytrip from Ouarzazate to check out the gorge.  It was supposed to be a weeklong vacation for them, but they lost a couple of days due to a snow delay leaving Sweden.  They flew into Marrakesh, drove to Ouarzazate, to the gorge and now had to backtrack to catch their flight.  That’s a lot of driving in 5 days!

Aya had some chickens, but also a peacock and a peahen.

The Dadès River.

Aya had an area by the river with some hammocks.

Octi's spot for the night.

It was a nice view from the campground.

The colours got a bit better at sunset.

A German couple in their early 60s showed up later in their minivan, but apart from a quick hello, I never did chat with them, the only other tourists staying at the campground.  Aya had told me that it went down to -10 C the night before.  I was concerned about my waterpipe freezing and Octi has developed the slightest drip in a pipe from the water tank, so I decided to drain the water before going to bed.  Thankfully it didn't get that cold.