Drove up the road to Aït Benhaddou this morning and managed to park in a big spacious car park. Still had to be guided in by a ‘guide’ though! When asked how much?
He said “Oh comme ci comme ça”
“Is there a charge to park?”
Under his breath “non”
Gave him £2 then he said “Have you got any biscuits or anything?”
Assuming he’d keep an eye on things, we set off for the UNESCO world heritage site that is the Benhaddou ksar.
Had to cross a thankfully, almost dry riverbed to get up into the town and then avoid guides and salesmen at every corner. It is an amazing place and you can easily see why films such as ‘Lawrence of Arabia ‘ were made here. Battled the tour groups to get up to the top where there are remains of a fortified granary and wide ranging views of the surrounding desert.
After much deliberation, we then headed south towards the Drâa Valley through the date-palm oases. We’d been given a couple of recommendations by a German man who was parked next to us a couple of nights ago, the first one being Tamnougalt which sounds an awful lot like the second one, Tamegroute!
Getting into the campsite/garden of Jardin de Tamnougalt was eventful. As I spotted a peacock strutting past and reached for the camera, we turned into the tightest 90°entrance we’ve done in ages. Complete with steep ramp, there were a few expletives escaping from the normally calm and eloquent Monsieur Bramley, as the underside of the van did a tiny scrape on the concrete.
It seems that we’ve landed in a small corner of paradise here though. It’s a small hotel with no real camping facilities other than parking, but here we are, surrounded by palm trees with peacocks – it’s lovely.
We walked up to one of the oldest ksars in Morocco, which was perched high on a hill above the old town. It was a ruin inside but interesting to walk through and not a soul around.
Once back at street level we ventured a little way into the town, which looked surprisingly like Aït Benhaddou.
There were tour guides lurking and all the women were dressed head to foot in black. Felt like we stuck out like sore thumbs so retreated back to paradise. The peacocks are rather loud and screechy though – I hope they know how to sleep! 🤣
