We’re hanging out at the hotel just before dinnertime, after spending most of today driving to our first port-of-call on our road trip around southern Morocco.

We had a good night’s sleep at the (characteristically cheap and cheerful) Ibis hotel in Marrakech, and ventured out into town to try and find ourselves a rental car. We’re doing things a little differently this time, giving ourselves the freedom to do what we want by having our own vehicle and not pre-booking hotels weeks in advance like we usually do. It’s a little more risky this way, but it gives us the opportunity to chop and change our itinerary around when we feel like it.

After about 15 minutes walking, we located the local Budget rent-a-car. We had already pre-paid, so I assumed we would be good to go in no time. Unfortunately for us, we managed to arrive at a time when an irate French woman was voicing her displeasure about the radio in the car she had just rented from them. I couldn’t make out exactly what she was saying (my grasp of the French language being almost as good as my grip on reality), but from what we could gather there was a problem with her radio (it was emitting a loud, regular beeping sound).

Obviously as passionate about having music on her trip I was, she was infuriated with the response “radios aren’t included in the price of small cars”, despite them being equipped with a perfectly serviceable radio / cassette player. It then dawned on my that it’s possible we may have the same problem, and sure enough, as soon as we got our car and turned on the radio - ”beep! beep! beep!”,  and that’s before we even got to the flat tyre and non-functioning locking. Looks like we’re going to be talking to each other a lot on the long drive…

After a quick tyre top up, we were on our way out of Marrakech and up to our first port of call: Ait Benhaddou, just south of Ouarzazte where according to the guidebook is the site of “one of the most exotic and best-preserved kasbas in the entire Atlas region.”