Let’s continue the recap of my trip: Morocco Uncovered (with Intrepid). It’s been a minute!

I took this trip in December/January. For previous posts (I recommend you at least skim them!) look at the following.

• Day 1: Travel and Casablanca
• Day 2: Casablanca and Rabat
• Day 3: Meknes and Volubilus
• Day 4: Chefchaouen
• Day 5: Fes
• Day 6: Midelt
• Day 7: To the Desert
• Day 8: I get to ride a camel!
• Day 9: Hiking and more oranges

Day 10: I was still in Bou Tharer in the M’Goun Valley. Today we would head off to the next stop, Ait Benhadou.

Breakfast was in the dining room instead of the cave room. But! Barb from the trip read that I hadn’t gotten any pictures of the cave room and shared some with me. Can you tell why it was called the cave room?

I didn’t make a note of what breakfast was, but my memory says bread and jams with juice, as well as hard boiled eggs and yogurt. Then back to the room to finish any last minute packing and get ready to Get in the Van!

We started down the road and after driving a few miles, one of the people suddenly realized she had forgotten to return her room key! Since these were real keys, it was important that the hotel get it back. Aman and the driver flagged down a cab driver going the other way from us and asked him to take it to the hotel. We were all tickled by this, but it made sense: it was a road that only went back and forth so the driver would be going right by it. I believe then Aman called the hotel to tell them to expect the key delivery.

We did a cafe and bathroom stop after an hour or so. I really needed that break, too much coffee or something. They had a lot of rose products for sale as it was a local specialty.

Our next stop was Kabash Amerdil to visit an Amazigh nomad museum. We had a guided tour and it was a really interesting place.

This cat didn’t move while we were there–it must have been used to sleeping through a lot of commotion.

There were beautiful gardens with roses and grapes and other plants.

I enjoyed seeing the old phonograph as well as many other artifacts. Isn’t it funny that a phonograph is an artifact? Is it?

There were a lot of tiny doors and staircases as well. They told us that was to keep out invaders: if they had to duck going through a door it was harder to attack right away.

It was a lovely sunny day as you can see, and we were surrounded by beautiful mountains. It was a bit windy though.

Our next stop was a restaurant in Ouarzazate, called the city of movies, because so many movies are made there. If you have seen a movie with a desert, it was likely made in Ouarzazate. I would have loved to have spent more time there, but we just went to the restaurant. It was in a square, but no time for exploring or shopping.

The food was good: I had a goat cheese appetizer (fried) and an Argentinian meat wrap. After lunch we drove by Atlas Studios and other places where films were made. We also saw the world’s largest solar city, a shiny thing in the distance.

We made it to Ait ben hadou in the afternoon. There it was very cold and windy! We visited the rug collective first and learned how rugs were made. It was quite funny as the guide (a woman!) told us that three of the women working there were named Fatima, so we met Fatima 1, Fatima 2, and Fatima 3. The guide also kept referring to the place as a queendom. Of course they wanted us to buy rugs, but that wasn’t in my budget/suitcase space.

The old city was across the river from the rug collective and that’s where we headed next. We walked through the village and headed up towards the top.

We saw the special art they make there, which is like invisible ink in a way, as it is heated by a flame to bring out the colors. I did buy one print.

On the way back down, I must have been looking around too much and I messed up my foot down a stair and fell and rolled my left ankle…it hurt like the dickens and I had to sit for awhile and let the nausea pass. Everybody was really nice about it and helped me out. I was a little worried it would be too swollen to enjoy the rest of the tour, but after waiting a few minutes it didn’t seem too awful, so I was able to slowly make my way down to the bottom of the village.

We all had tea and cookies at another women’s collective. While we had a decent amount of mint tea on the trip, I have to say that I actually thought we would have even more than we did, and also that it wasn’t as sweet as I was led to believe. This is probably because I grew up in the south (in the US) where sweet tea is a way of life and am accustomed to tea so sweet it hurts your teeth to drink it. But I enjoyed sitting and drinking some tea and letting my ankle rest.

Our last stop for the night was our hotel, which was nearby, but not walking distance really. In fact, Aman warned us to be careful if we went out walking as there were sometimes packs of wild dogs. NICE.

The hotel was a very nice, old building, and my room was large. I had a balcony but the pigeons seemed to have taken it over. It was cold outside anyway. The room had good heating however.

I took a few pictures before dinner as I had some time to explore the hotel. There was a nice looking pool but of course it was too cold to swim.

We had the coldest dinner ever! The heaters in the dining room weren’t working properly so they brought over a few space heaters, which helped a bit. We all shared food: soup, meatballs, chicken and vegetable tagine. There were also little noodles that looked good but then seemed to have rose water flavoring, which I really don’t care for though I know others love it. Dessert was fruit, bananas, and apples. Interesting fact: the bananas in Morocco are a smaller breed than those in the US.

I went to bed early, after dinner, and enjoyed reading before falling asleep.