After breakfast at our gite we headed back down the mountain, leaving Aroumd around 830. We got to Imlil, retrieved our bags, and reboarded the minibus. We are fortunate to have a much nicer minibus than we had in the north. Our previous minibuses had limited legroom, with your knees crammed into the back of the seat in front of you. This one was more like "economy plus" seating in airplanes, with another 2 to 3 inches of leg space. That seemingly small amount of extra space makes a significant difference on long rides which we will have over the next several days.
View of Imlil on our descent.
There is pizza everywhere.
Donkey refueling after carrying our bags down to Imlil.
From Imlil to Ait Benhaddou it is about a 5 1/2 hour drive, but we encountered a lot of road construction which added another hour or so. The route headed part way back to Marrakech before turning east. For the first couple of hours the road went through a variety of terrain, flat and rolling hills, that was green with trees and crops. Eventually we headed up into the mountains and the vegetation mostly disappeared, placed with reddish brown mountains. At one rest break there was a nice garden with flowers in the courtyard next to the bathrooms and the cafe.
Eventually we reached Tizu n'Tichka, a 2260 m (7400 feet) pass through the mountains. As a reference for our friends back in Oregon, most of the passes in Oregon across the Cascade Mountains are just slightly over 4000 feet in elevation. After a brief stop at the pass we started the long descent. The landscape was mostly barren, and the pockets of green in the valley likely all turn brown by summer except for some pockets of trees near the stream bed which had a very low flow of water.
Ben's Doritos bag looked like it was ready to burst with the low air pressure at the pass.
One of the green valleys after we descended from the pass.
We finally arrived at our destination, Ait Benhaddou. It is a UNESCO world heritage site, but is more famous as a filming location for films like Lawrence of Arabia, Jesus of Nazareth, The Jewel of the Nile, Gladiator, and most recently some scenes from Game of Thrones. You may recognize it, but at least in Game of Thrones they have used computer generated imagery to enhance the scene, and in Game of Thrones made the city larger and more elaborate.
After checking into our hotel, we took advantage of a clothesline and the warm dry breeze on our balcony to do laundry. Most of the items were dry within an hour.
All the hotels are across the river from Ait Benhaddou. Only four families still live in the ancient outpost and there are a number of vendors selling things. At 7PM we left our hotel to walk over to Ait Benhaddou and climb to the top to watch the sunset. Tomorrow we will start at the entrance gates which should be more familiar to movie and TV buffs.
Looking west towards the new city.
The view to the east from the top.
We decided we needed a bit of variety in our diet, so we went to dinner at a Chinese restaurant with Rob and Vicky, a couple from Australia. It was a pleasant break from Moroccan food that does not have a lot of variety. Also, most of the Moroccan Meals we have had have more meat than we are used to eating.
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