We’re sitting in our hotel room at the moment, after just arriving back from the restaurant following our first taste of traditional Moroccan food. The tajine - a stew of meat and vegetables cooked in a conical shaped pot over an open fire - is still not something I’m totally sold on yet, but as that’s one of the only options to appear to be on the menu since we arrived in the country I’m sure I’ll develop a taste for it.

It was an overcast but scenic journey up to and through Tizi N’Tichka (2092m at the pass, and checking out the views of the snow-capped Atlas mountain along the way) to our first port-of-call - the three star Complexe Touristique La Kasbah in Ait Benhaddou. It’s been raining here quite a lot recently, as there as a gigantic puddle where the car park should be directly opposite the hotel, and it looks like the heavens are about to open up again at any moment.

We managed to get a room here with no problems, despite the enormous amounts French tourists staying. Room and board here seems reasonable at about 600Dh (about £60), including dinner and breakfast. It seems as though a considerable amount of cash has been spent on the place recently - everything seems pretty new (despite the gallons of mud everywhere dragged in from the swamp car park outside), but as we toured around the gigantic complex a bit we discovered that quite a lot of it was actually disused. It’s possible that a lot of it is closed “off season”, but a lot of the rooms and recreational areas don’t appear to have been tended to for quite some time.

It’s quite comfortable here, but there was one thing we couldn’t quite fathom out - why were the maids washing the floor with what looked like the same muddy water from outside in the car park?

It’s pretty chilly here at the moment, so we didn’t stay outside for very long. We did manage to take a quick gander down to the river-front, casually glancing at the available wares in the tourist souvenir shops (but skilfully avoiding eye contact with any of the shop owners).
 
Down on the river front, there was a fast flowing brown river which could only be crossed by means of a donkey - the prize for such an endeavour: The kasbah itself in it’s all it’s reddy-brown gigantic splendour. We did think about going across at that point, but was put off buy the exorbitant first price for the ten second ride over the water to the opposite bank - 150Dh each! We made our excuses and decided that we would go tomorrow, but not before asking the hotel receptionist what a reasonable price would be.