It’s been a pretty full day today - we’ve moved on now from Ait Benhaddou and are now about 120 kilometres from our previous stopover, in a place called Boumalne du Dadès. We had a brief visit to one of the Gorges here just to get a taster for what’s in store tomorrow, but for the time being we’re staying in Hotel Restaurant Chems overnight before visiting them tomorrow proper. It’s actually become very chilly here now, and although the rooms here are clean and comfortable (if a little basic) we’re sitting around with our sweaters and jackets on due to the lack of heating.

The weather was much better today, and we couldn’t leave Ait Benhaddou without getting a good look at the Kasbah. After a traditional French colonial breakfast of bread / jam and coffee, we checked out of the hotel and made our way down to where the donkeys were at the riverbank, ever-ready to ferry tourist after tourist across the shallow brown liquid. We payed the owners 20Dh each for the ride across, which seemed a little steep for a ten second donkey ride - still, it added to the experience I guess - I’m pretty sure you haven’t visited Morocco until you’ve ridden at least one donkey (and at least it wasn’t the 150Dh they asked for yesterday.)

As expected, after we reached the opposite side of the river about six or seven guides descended on us from apparently nowhere. We managed to fight them off with relative ease (everyone does seem to be a little more easy going here than elsewhere in the world). Someone scored a coup here, because you actually have to go through someone’s house to visit the main attraction itself - at a cost of 5Dm each. Not very much, but when you consider how many tourists go through here day, someone is having a bit of an easy life!

The kasbah (meaning fortified town) itself is amazing - this enormous structure is made completely out of the local mud, sand and bamboo and was probably home to hundreds of people in it’s day. It’s kept in very good condition, not for the just for the tourist trade but for the film industry - a lot of very famous films have been made here, including Lawrence of Arabia and Jesus of Nazareth (incidentally, just up the road in Ouzrzazate there is a massive film studio, apparently where The Mummy was made).

There were a few shops open on the way up (much like it probably was when the place was fully inhabited) selling carpets, souvenirs and crafts. The view from right from the top gave an all encompassing view of the surrounding town, and a superb panoramic vista of the surrounding mountains.