echoes in eternity

The next day we made our way from our hotel, which was twenty minutes by taxi from Ouarzazate, into the city itself to find the bus station, but before we do that, we wanted to share this photo we forgot to include yesterday:

Anyway, our lonely planet city map was, as always, completely inaccurate and largely useless, so we asked in a tour shop and got some directions from a very helpful young local girl.

When we got to the local bus station we were hoping to find a grand taxi to Aït Benhaddou, a UNESCO world heritage site and the filming location for a whole lot of movies and TV shows, including gladiator, prince of Persia and game of thrones. Its one of the key places I wanted to visit so I was pretty excited, even through the guidebook described it as a bit fake and not worth a visit.

When we got to the taxi place it was just like tafroute… There were no grand taxis to ABH because it was low season so we had to either get a private taxi or a local mini bus. We argued and negotiated with a tout until we got an acceptable price and he took us out to our taxi… which turned out to be a minibus, which would not be leaving until it was full, which would never happen because we were the only tourists and locals don’t really go to ABH.

Penny stormed off to find us a new cab and I saw a new and unexpected side to her… She was ruthless in her negotiations and in the end she got us a private taxi for an awesome price and we were finally off to ABH!

The great thing about ABH is that its purely for tourists so there are barely any locals living there… I mean there are a few, and of course they all have shops, but generally you can just wander around as much as you want and go through any door that’s unlocked without fear of winding up in someone’s kitchen.

You enter through a large gate and make your way down the winding streets at your own pace. I noticed immediately that the guidebook had let us down again, but this time in a good way. There’s nothing fake about ABH…its simply been painstakingly restored and maintained to UNESCO standards using original materials and techniques, so it doesn’t look like the weird bastardised hybrid kasbahs you see everywhere else in Morocco.

We took a detour through one of the many small houses that cluster around the main street. Inside we found an old weaving setup (which I accept was fake), and a small winding staircase that we followed up to the roof.

No BCA here… Each tread and riser was a different size and we had to duck our heads to make it through but it was worth it for a view from above.

OK, not as amazing as the red oceans in the Sahara but impressive on its own way. We spent another hour exploring the ruins, walking through tiny enclosed streets and wide boulevards…

…past both crumbling ruins and completely intact towers…

…before climbing all the way to the mysterious building at the top of the city, which historians think was probably a granary…

…then back down and up a hill outside the kasbah walls, offering some great views of the city…

I was really happy with ABH any glad we decided to visit, so we jumped back into our cab and headed all the way back to Ouarzazate and our hotel… Next stop, Dade’s gorge!