Today is a journey of around 240km. This includes several stops of course.

We were up early, had breakfast and packed up ready to head off for the day. The bus was meant to leave at 7.30am – however in a couple of days we have worked out that nothing will probably run to time. Sure enough, the bus finally departed at 8.25am.

We travelled a long, windy road which was quite red, brown and dusty. There were alot of roadworks going on. It was almost as if there had been several landslides and they were fixing the roads.

Randomly as we travelled, there was small villages in the middle of nowhere, and people out walking. There didn’t seem to anything close by so who knows where they were heading!

It didn’t seem to matter how small the villages were, there were still many satellite dishes and locals with mobile phones.

We knew how high we were at several points along the route thanks to Socrates, our Cypriot counterpart on the bus. 🙂 We had a good group of Cypriots with us. They kept us entertained, and sane!

We stopped at the top of the High Atlas Mountains (2260m) at a small market called Tichka.

They sold everything traditional – tagines, crystals, clay pots, quartz and other stones etc. This is very much like other countries where bargaining is expected – if you touch something they think you want it, and if you walk away they will follow you.

We stopped at another small market place before arriving in Ait Ben Haddou.

It was a very hot day and everyone was feeling the heat. Lunch was meant to be at 1.00pm, but that was never going to happen. It was 3.00pm when we sat down to lunch at the Oasis D’Or in Ait Ben Haddou.

For lunch we had deconstructed salad and breads, tagines (beef (maybe camel)/chicken), couscous and vegetables. We also got a bottle of wine (Rose) which came out warm. We put it in ice, but this didn’t improve the taste at all. In fact, you wouldn’t believe it – Suzanne, Kirsteen and I left it. We couldn’t drink it.

After lunch we were told we were going for a walk to the top of the hill. It was 39 degrees and we had already taken photos of the village up the top of the hill so these white women were not walking anywhere we didn’t need. Expending additional energy in that heat would be just plain stupid! Turns out we weren’t the only ones – many of us stayed behind for nearly two hours at the outside terrace of the restaurant and had ourselves a nice cold beer instead.

The Ksar Ait Ban Haddou is a UNESCO World Heritage site and is a great example of Berber architecture. There were small dwellings inside the surrounding wall (ksar). Some berbers still live in these dwellings.

We left for Ourzazate at around 6.00pm – which was still 40km away. It was still 38 degrees. We were originally scheduled to check in to the hotel at 6.30pm – not a happening thing.

Coming into Ourzazate we passed some film studios – apparently Ourzazate is well known for it’s studios. More on this in a few days time when we visit one.

Ourzazate is a small town located in the south of Morocco, a caramel-coloured oasis highlighted by the cloudless azure of the North African sky. Ouarzazate is the gateway to the south – the desert.

We stopped at the Kasbah Taourirt which was one of the first great Berber architectures built in the 17th century, It is also a UNESCO World Heritage Site and is currently in the process of restorations. Once again there was music, folklore and Moroccan tea. We also went on a tour of the interior of the Cerkas Palace here which was built in 1754.

We finally got to the Hotel Karam Palace at 8.00pm, and it took us nearly 50 minutes to check in to our rooms. We had a quick showers (which was more like a hose – no pressure and it didn’t come out of the shower head). Dinner was changed to 9.30pm so all of us, (which includes Rebecca and Stu from Napier) headed to the bar for a well deserved cold drink. We went for a late dinner at 10.15pm (snack really) and then went back to the bar until midnight. We did manage to find some relatively decent wine tonight at 120 dirrham (around $20 NZD. It was still 37 degrees when we headed to bed.

The bar itself was in the middle, outside which was nice as it was so hot. the barman was really cool and he stayed open late for us. Not just us – we had some of our Cypriot fiends join us too.

Next leg tomorrow – off to Tinghir. Wonder if we will get some different food, and whether we might be on time so we get some free time at the hotel for a swim.