A Moroccan told me that France may specialize in desserts, his country specializes in deserts and that’s why they have three kinds – ones of clay, ones of stone, and ones of sand. We’d come to know well Morocco’s clay deserts during our ride. Now it was time to discover the other two.

We stood at the walls of the Marrakech medina with Hammed, our riad host, as a big, black SUV, pulled up. Having watched too much Law and Order, I snapped a pic of the license plate and sent it to my kids with a note to share it with the police if we didn’t come home. I felt the suspicion at least a little merited. I’d booked this portion of our trip on the internet with references that could easily have been spoofed. We were carrying about $1,000 in cash to pay the balance for the tour and our passports would likely be worth quite a bit more. Hammed, whispered, ‘Madame Suzanna, aren’t you a little scared?’ I’d told him nothing about the sketchy nature of our arrangements. It wasn’t very reassuring.

Thankfully, our driver, Mohammed, was reassuring; very reassuring. A proud new dad, he was immediately telling us about his baby while humming to an old Cold Play song. He also told us the trip would take us through his hometown in Morocco’s south. Our trip, in fact, would be taking us about 450 miles, over all three parts of the Atlas range – Middle, High, and Low (in that order), and across the rock desert, with the sand desert, the Sahara, as our final goal.

The North of Morocco, where we’d spent most of our time, is largely Arab. The number of Berbers increases as you reach Marrakech, at the center of the country. But in the south, Berbers are dominant. More accurately called Amazigh, which means Free Men, these once tribal, semi-nomadic people long pre-dated the Arabs in the region. Mohammed is Amazigh and he told us about his culture as he drove. Stopping at a tea-stand as we climbed into the High Atlas, it became clear that he knew every other driver ferrying tourists along the route … further reassurance.

Pulling to the shoulder at an overlook, we watched the daily life of the Amazigh village hugging the steep side of the mountain across the gorge. Noting the women carrying fodder from the rocky creek bed hundreds of feet below the village, Mohammed explained that most of the men work in the cities, leaving the women and children to tend the flocks of goats and apple orchards terraced into the rockface. If this was the life he’d known as a child, I understood why Mohammed seemed so blasé about leaving his young wife and new baby alone in Marrakech for four days to drive a couple of American tourists around the backside of beyond– it could have been four months.

Exiting the mountains to the south, the terrain softened from steep slopes of granite to mesas and flats of volcanic rubble with scattered villages of square red mud buildings. Our mid-day stop would be at a UNESCO site, Ait Ben Haddou; a 1000 year-old fortified Amazigh village that has more recently been the setting for numerous film productions including Gladiator and Game of Thrones. With multiple levels of interconnected buildings rising up the side of a hill above a dry river bed, Ait Ben Haddou, reminded me of the pueblos, like Acoma and Taos, that I’d visited in the American Southwest. At the top of this fortified village stood the remains of a granary that had also served as a lookout. Our guide, another Mohammed, explained that the tribe that had lived in this village under chief Haddou warred with other tribes over limited agricultural resources. The chief’s son – Ben Haddou –would signal his father of approaching threats using smoke and fire from this fortified high point.

As our journey continued one mesa of enormous proportions began to dominate the vista. As we approached it, a river became visible, its flood plain carpeted with thousands of date palms heavy with fruit. I was again reminded of the industry of these amazing people who have carved such bounty at the edge of the ever-growing Sahara.

Morocco -- Entering the Realm of the Amazigh