Rock For Sale – As much as you can carry!
Rock For Sale. Some people are so poor in Morocco, that they’ve decided to become geologists and entrepreneurs at the same time just to try and get by.
Anyone who has undertaken a minibus trip to the Sahara Desert Dunes would have come across this scene in the Atlas Mountains, which is on the way to the biggest desert in the world.
That’s right, it’s benches full of rocks, that people are trying to sell to tourists. But there are no signs saying Rock For Sale! It’s amazing that these things are in the middle of nowhere.
The journey itself is an interesting one as the landscape ranges from red, flat and rocky terrain, to fingers of ground that jut straight-up into the crisp blue sky. Against this barren backdrop was scattered the odd mud brick village with its robed inhabitants.
But it was here that with each mile passed, it seemed the poorer the people became. The sole aim of life out this way was putting food on the table. Anything else was a bonus in rural Morocco.
Enterprising locals resorted to selling an assortment of rocks from every possible geological age, displaying them on shoddy wooden stands that were about to collapse. I think some of them had fossils which were the main attraction and drawcard for buying them
So if you’re having a crap day at work – think of these poor sods out in the middle of nowhere, trying to make a living by trying to flog off their Rock For Sale to tourists who don’t want to buy them because they will probably all exceed their baggage limits.
If you’re interested, you can climb the Rock For Sale – check out Rock Climbing Atlas – South Western Europe and Morocco
We don’t realise how good we’ve got life in the West sometimes. These poor people are selling rocks and there is a Coco Cola sign in the background.
.-= Ryan´s last blog ..Linlithgow Palace =-.
Jeez,depending on the price of a rock, you would think you would just buy one and throw it away for the sake of giving them a few quid. I mean they need it more than we do and at least they are not begging or robbing from us, they are trying to sell something (even though it is rock) as a living.
.-= Park Hotel´s last blog ..Days Hotel Dublin Park West =-.
This is really bad. I was on the border between Burma and Thailand and the Burmese would swim the river everyday to Thailand to beg. Sometimes it is hard to rememeber how poor some people are.
.-= Steve´s last blog ..Sandboarding =-.
Make you realize how good things are here.Middle east has some high levels of poverty too.
I stopped here and bought rocks. They have awesome trilobite fossils in them – some of the best fossils of their type in the world. Not too heavy, not too large. Great gifts for young kids.
Hard way to make a living!