craftybunny

This is the day on the trip where we came close to serious injury (more than once), for which Dean would never have forgiven me. But it was also one of the days I enjoyed the most. We took 4WD land rovers up into Dade Gorge and beyond into the scrub brush emptiness, into the rounded hill and rough stone landscape. It was amazingly beautiful and I was in my element leaning out the window to get my shot (ah, rolling with Dean has forced me to innovate in the "taken from a moving car" style of photography). — the trick is 1/1000 second shutter speed and don't get anything too close to the foreground when you're moving fast.

But first, the almost serious injury event... We were on the first paved highway part of the trip, not really paying too much attention because we'd just left the hotel, when the driver took a turn too fast and you know 4WD vehicles don't corner as well. He missed a turn at highway and slid sideways across the gravel turnout out of control toward a 1 foot stone wall and a 200-300 foot drop into the gorge when the guy next to me said the least ironic Hail Mary I have ever heard. The last bit of traction on the tires caught, we turned an inch from the wall and bounced back on the pavement. I thanked him later for giving me new meaning for the phrase "to throw a Hail Mary" because I always thought that was a sports term. But then on a rougher section of the track, the truck went up on the right hand two wheels and teetered there for an awful moment and even later in the dark, back on the highway, we almost hit a black goat (the driver didn't even swerve or flinch). After which we asked the Hail Mary guy if there was a "shelf life" to a good Hail Mary that we were unaware of because it seemed to be good for the entire day.

This is where we stopped to catch our breaths after the near-accident.



Gretchin always called "shot gun" because I have never seen anyone suffer as much from motion sickness — and this from me who was always handled a bucket as a preventive measure on family road trips. But after the "almost going over the cliff" thang, no one fought her for the front seat. Really, Gretchin, you just take the front seat, honey.



The landscape was empty of buildings, but you couldn't stop for a moment without someone running down the hill to beg for money. The only other travelers we saw the entire day were two road motorcycles (which couldn't have been comfortable on that rough 4WD track and neither of them looked pleased) and a support van for them. No clue what their story was. So, it couldn't have been a very profitable place to beg from by-passers. In fact, at one point, late in the day, already close to dark, we passed a young boy standing by the side of the road paying a violin (badly). The driver didn't even slow.









We ended our day driving back through Todas Gorge where we'd made arrangements to visit a house full of weavers and have tea and cake and take their portraits, but it was already after sunset, we were already late for dinner and way past the Hammen hour. So, the two organizers ran in to quickly apologize for not staying, leaving us surrounded by kids begging for candy and whaling on each other. But since we were spread across 3 4WD vehicles and people weren't listening, this created confusion about why the people who really wanted to take portraits of the locals weren't allowed to go in with them.

I was hard pressed to limit myself to only posting 22 pictures from our day. The rest of the trip through Dades Gorge is here.

The entire Morocco set in progress is here.

Can I, shamefully and with great embarrassment, admit that I have a vanity alert with Google to search for new entries that have anything to do with my name? And this is what it threw up today. Wow, I used to be a decent poet. What ever happened to that? Damn, everything I believed about God and sex and love is all there.