Getting back into this blog writing. We are now in a tiny village on the Atlantic coast - which is, according to my guidebook, the largest settlement in either direction for 100km - and the internet cafe is the hottest gig in town. As I said yesterday, Morocco hasn't yet discovered mass tourism on the majority of its coastline; which may have something , in this area at least, to do with the fact that it is one of the biggest dope-producing regions in the world. We are now in 'Kif' country; the Rif mountains, which crash dramatically in to the Mediterranean Sea in northern Morocco.

Back to the Atlantic coast, where I left you yesterday, something like the last two days of August, nearly two weeks in to the trip. We took a grand taxi back to Tiznit, and then a bus out again a couple of hours later, into the Anti-Atlas mountains - basically an extension of the Atlas range which stretches, under different names, from the Sahara in southern Morocco to The Algerian border in the north east. It's a huge range which defines north Africa, created when Europe and Africa collided a few millenia back. This part, slightly lower than the High Atlas, was recommended to us by a couple of travellers in Marrakech, and it seemed vaguely out of the way in an unlikely to be full of backpackers kind of way. As our clapped out bus chugged painfully slowly out of the Souss Valley and up a mountain pass, I sincerely hoped it would be worth the effort. It took the bus, including obligatory kebab stop, four and a half hours to cover the 110km to Taffraoute, our destination for the next three nights. It was hot, cramped and unpleasant again, and I swore to myself that I would not, if I could help it, use the Moroccan bus service ever again. Grand taxis would be the way forward. It was however, far from dull, thanks not only to the stunning scenery outside the window, which was changing colours from russet red to pinky beige to deep rusts and browns as we passed in the late afternoon sunshine, but also to a delightful little girl in front of us who demanded our attention for the entire journey, fascinated by my camera for some reason.

Taffraoute, which I instantly loved, set to a stunning backdrop of mountains, is in the middle of huge areas of boulders and bizzarre rock formations which I strained to take pictures of as we were passing through by bus. It was getting dark as we arrived, but the next day we hired a pair of sturdy mountain bikes for about 7 pounds each and headed straight into the countryside and blazing heat, armed only with a couple of bottles of water, some stodgy cakes and a map which looked like it had been scribbled by a 6 year old. We set off at a fair clip, covering the flat tarmacced road out of Tafraoute to the south in no time and passing some gorgeous crags, rocks and boulders which seemed to litter the landscape in a careless way, as if spewed out by some passing volcano. A kindly gentleman paused to ask us where we were from and offer us some cold water. He pointed us in the right direction and we headed off road and onto some 'piste' which twisted and curved upwards towards some stunning landscape. The whole area around us resembled a moonscape - just rocks, dust and boulders, and a path winding vaguely through it. No cars, birds, people, just silence.

Presently, just as I was beginning to wonder whether I might have taken a wrong turning, we came to a tiny Berber village whose name escapes me. I asked a passing local if it was the one that corresponded to my less than adequate map, and was pleasantly surprised to find that it was. He then attempted to engage me in conversation in French - not easy considering we were both speaking it as a third language, and I know that mine is certainly not conversational anymore, if it ever was. He invited us into his modest house - really just a mud-built construction with very little furniture or furnishings, but his whole family appeared from nowhere and were soon sat down and presented with mint tea and couscous, with cactus fruit on the side. I struggled to eat the couscous, because it was served with warm milk and argan nut oil, making it taste like the worst school semolina you could ever imagine. Probably the grimace on my face was obvious, as this was soon whisked away and I washed away the taste with the delicious sweet mint tea. We were given a tour of the house, which was mostly a storage area for the argan nuts that grow in abundance in this region, without the benefit of electricity or running water. It is extraordinary how people from such deprived places have such open minds and open hearts very often, throwing open their houses to complete strangers, feeding them and watering them as if they were long lost relatives. We were on our way again after an exchange of pleasantries; oddly, the elderly guy who welcomed us in seemed me to want to keep in touch by writing to him. I gave him my email address.

As the sun began its descent, around four o'clock, we reached the point I'd been aiming for on this cycle trip, an extraordinary and surreal area of rocks and boulders painted blue by an eccentric Belgian artist in 1984 for no very obvious or stated reason. Although the paint had begun to chip and flake in certain places, which given the ravages of time isn't that surprising, it is incredibly affecting, leaving you with the strange impression that you have just smoked something strange.The scope of the whole project is impressive - the area of painted boulders covers a couple of acres easily, probably the size of a football pitch or two (why do people in Britain compare big things to football pitches? Is that the biggest thing we could decently imagine?) We wandered around for a while, clambering up rocks and taking pictures from all sorts of angles, with the late afternoon sun adding extra dashes of colour to the riot of different shades of blue around us. It was deeply memorable; probably the strangest and most incongruous thing I have ever seen, and we had it all to ourselves. We hardly saw a soul all day, except for the family in the Berber village.

As we cycled and hauled the bikes back through increasingly tough terrain which I was snapping away at with my camera, thinking I could probably make a bit of money for 'Mountain Bike Monthly', the inevitable happened and Natalia got a puncture. Luckily, we had a spare. Unluckily, it also had a puncture, as I discovered after I had changed it. I thought about the faffy job of reparing the puncture, but it was rapidly getting dark, and were only 4km from home, so we opted to wheel the bikes back. Happily, this was mostly downhill. We passed a notable landmark on the way called 'Le Chapeau de Napolean'; a large rock formation which did indeed look like Napolean's hat, from a certain angle. At the first restaurant we got to, I guzzled down two large coca colas and a bottle of water. After dinner, I treated myself to a nice hammam and scrub-down to get rid of the day'd dust and wind down; lovely. Natalia, unfortunately, wasn't able to, as women are barred from hammams after 6pm. Such is life for women in this male dominated country.

The next day was spent largely lounging by a large and lovely swimming pool at the top of the town, in an expensive hotel. It had a prime view over the entire town, and the weather obliged most of the day, although there were threatening rolls of thunder nearby. About three pm we left our slumbers and got a grand taxi to the neighbouring Ameln Valley; a stunning valley of pink mountains and shady palmerais which was festooned with lovely villages clinging to the mountainsides. We strolled up through the valley and to one of these villages through extravagent palm trees and lush greenery, a strak contrast to the region we had been the previops day, obviously fed by underground water supplies. Up until this point, we still hadn't seen running water in Morocco. We spent some time talking to the shopkeeper who sold us a couple of glasses of fresh orange, and hiked back to another wonderful sunset.

The next day, we knew, would be a pain: getting back out of Tafraoute, without backtracking again, meant a costly shared taxi - we ended up negotiating for about ten pounds each with a couple of English backpackers we had met - a lot in this country - for what was about a three to four hour journey, in a clapped out red Ford Escort. The price was worth it; as I suspected, the scenery to the north of Tafraoute was even better than what we had seen getting there. The road climbed up through spectacular passes and descended through breathtaking gorges, although our driver kept having to get out and feed water under the bonnet to the thirsty car. As we cruised into Inzegane, a large and unpleasant city some 150km north, near Agadir, we were back into reality after a great three days somewhat removed from it. The grand taxi we caught from Inzegane to Tarroudant, our destination for the night, only took another hour. We were to travel in a roughly northeast direstion for the next three days until we reached the Sahara desert.

Tarroudant was pleasant but unexceptional, and nothing very interesting happened there except me buying a lovely blue towel in the souq to replace the two I had inexplicably left in the last two hotels. We had a nice meal in the main square on a rooftop terrace, watching the sunset over the mosque as evening prayers began and the 'imams' started their eerie calls to prayer across town. The next day's bus journey took us 6 hours and nearly 300km east, to Ait Benhaddou.