Ait-Ben-Haddou

 Hello Everybody! 

Today we woke up in the Sahara, which was beautiful, albeit a little bit too hot for me at 7 am. We had the most amazing breakfast in the restaurant tent! The cakes were super light and fluffy and it was the best msemmen (basically an Indian paratha) from the entire trip. Breakfasts here have been pretty uneventful, lots of breads and jams and sometimes eggs, but the lack of noteworthy food seems to be the theme of this trip. Moroccans have all these spices surrounding them and yet their food is so bland. Often we’re the troublesome patrons asking waiters for salt, lemon, pepper, hot sauce or olive oil just to add a little something. I feel like if the country were a person it would definitely be a meat and potatoes only kind of guy, especially if you replace the potatoes with bread. I will say though that the orange juice has been amazing, freshly squeezed with no added sugars, I’m super impressed and this is coming from a total California girl!

Before long the workers loaded our bags onto the roof of the car!!! Thankfully I just packed a backpack that was crammed in the back. We, the Germans, and the Brits were driven back out of middle of the Sahara to the town where we left our cars. 

From there, Susan, Auntie Sureia, and I made our way south towards Marrakech through the Atlas Mountains. The goal was to do the 10 hour drive in a day but at about hour 7 we were getting pretty hungry and tired and decided to pull into a small town called Ait Ben Haddou. Here they have a UNESCO site which is a dwelling of homes called a kasr. If the buildings look familiar is probably because you’ve seen it before! Hollywood has filmed both the Gladiator and Game of Thrones at this site, along with a bunch of other movies.

Today, most of the homes are used as shops that sell tourist trinkets, but there are still five families that actually live there! We met a nice gentleman who was actually one of those people. He explained that the families at the site slowly moved into the city across the bridge as the world modernized. Apparently until the government built a bridge 10 years ago, the river would flood the locals in and they wouldn’t have access to food or water for periods of time. They still mainly use candles for light and have some solar energy but no electricity. Also, Hollywood frequently casts these local family members as extras in their films, a fact he was very proud to share with us. The site is beautiful in its own rugged charming manner, but I can’t say I’d ever live without modern amenities.

At the top, we soon found out for ourselves they have massive winds that literally blow you away! I have never experienced anything like this!! Jes used to complain about biking in the Netherlands against the wind but I always figured it was wind. How bad could it really be? I’m sorry I ever had an inkling of doubt Jes! I could barely stand straight and had to hold onto Auntie Sureia for support. Thankfully we made it down in one piece, but we won’t talk about the millions of knots this little excursion left in my hair. Between that and the sand, combing my hair through was quite the process, I was so tempted to just chop it all off!

We accidentally stayed and explored way later than we intended to and weren’t feeling confident about tackling the mountain switchbacks in the dark. So, we scrambled to find a hotel for the night. Actually the issue wasn’t finding a vacancy, the issue was finding a place not abandoned! Throughout this trip, many people in the tourists industries have referred to Morocco as sleeping for the past few years during Covid and they weren’t kidding. What was once a gorgeous mansion hotel was now covered in a layer of dust and only had one employee. I’ve seen brought horror movies to know that being the only guest in the boonies with an abandoned dwelling never ends well for the main characters. So we backed out of that hotel pretty quickly and then started driving around until we found a more populated place to stay for the night.

Honestly we were just grateful to have a clean space with a working shower. You wouldn’t believe how sandy we all were! I had to wash my hair out twice and I still found some sand after. At this rate, I’ll probably be bringing some of the Sahara home with me and I’m pretty sure my white Nikes will never recover haha. Oh well, guess that’s a small price I’ll happily pay for an adventure! Can’t wait to arrive in Marrakech tomorrow and explore.

Love you lots,

Carolyn