There is another hair-rising pass we had to conquer the Tizi n’ Tazazert with 2283 m. Very few of this odd tourist species go there. The road unpaved again, narrow as usual but at the beginning in good condition. Then the road condition changed and remained up to the top steep and rocky.
We drove past some hostels with souvenir stalls. Of course these clever locals know exactly that the one’n’only reason for each tourist to drive up this lousy road is to buy some Chinese made Moroccan souvenirs. In order not to disappoint us we found the very 1st one next to the very 1st accommodation – still some 3 km away from the top of the pass.
He was specialised in ugly knives with plastic knobs. We did not need to get out of the car to admire his offer; we even did not need to reduce the speed. He simply followed the car for some 100 m. We passed the 2nd accommodation. Next to it the gifts shop. This time specialised in tea pots – you surely know them from your last visit in a Chinese owned supermarket. The shop owner didn’t seem to be a great jogger – he had a bike with him. On the top the last and the most elevated accommodation. Of course we had to get out and to digitize the view. Otherwise you wouldn’t believe us. Here we discovered a kind of mobile gift shop. Some women overloaded with bracelets, rings and all kind of other precious jewellery. All was beautiful, most of it real antiquities – at least if you consider last year’s output of a Chinese manufacturer as antique. Again, the choice was overwhelming, we couldn’t decide, so we walked away. The ladies didn’t follow us, they were so overloaded with all this jewellery they couldn’t walk a long distance.
After all that enlightening experience we found a beautiful place for our lunch. We prepared some cheese sandwiches – and the biker with the Chinese tea pots arrived; probably thinking we’d need some green tea with the sandwiches. He biked the whole way up from 2700m to above 3000m to ask us if we would like one of these pots you get in any Chinese supermarket. This time he asked in English as he was not sure whether we were able to understand his French.
Well, we slightly postponed lunch and moved on. It started raining and we quickly as possible hurried back to the village of Nekob without any further encounters with souvenir sellers.
