Morocco - Ait Benhaddou and Zagora

 After a very cold night through which nobody slept very well, we got up early for the walk down to the road to Imlil where the van was waiting. We picked up our luggage, had coffee, and started on a fairly long travel day. Then there was a 6 hour drive up very winding roads, with occasional stops for construction. There was one stop for coffee, and after passing the summit of the Tichka Pass we stopped for lunch. From the van, and during stops, there were fantastic views of the pass and the High Atlas mountains.

We arrived at Ait Benhaddou late in the day, the remains of an old fortress, or ksar, and a World Heritage site. There were a lot of tourists there, I think mainly because this has been the location for the filming of many movies.

We checked into the hotel, and walked to the top of the ksar, where there is the remains of a storage building on the top of a rock outcrop, surrounded by mud-constructed buildings in which a few families live. I got a great picture in the sunset.

The families sell tourist items or artworks. There was an interesting shop where the artist painted using saffron, indigo, and tea, and then heated the paper over a burner to turn the tea dark with a very dramatic effect.  

The surrounding landscape is sparse and very eerie looking.

The next day was the drive to Zagora, the date growing area.

In the morning we stopped at the Atlas Movie Studios, where several people took the tour while the rest of us waited at the pool.

Next was a stop in the city of Ouarzazate, where we visited a spice and herbal medicine shop. We also stopped at a grocery store to pick up food for a picnic lunch later.

It was another of winding roads and amazing views of the rocky landscape. In the distance you could see long patches of green, following a river, where the dates are grown.

In Zagora, we went on a tour of a date plantation, where there were also small plots of land for growing vegetables, irrigated with water pumped from a well.

We had dinner at the hotel, which had a beautiful garden. Although we didn't have much time there, Zagora seemed like a very beautiful, clean city. At night when you look up at the side of the mountain, there is large writing in lights, spelling 'God, King, and Country' in Arabic. I saw this elsewhere in Morocco as well, and to me it shows the pride and devotion of the people.