~ Todra Gorge to Ait Benhaddou ~
Another day of little memory and little enjoyment after a night of no sleep. Poor Mohamed looked disheartened as he saw the six of us trudge out of our rooms this morning, now all unwell. We started our 2 h 56 min (196.1 km) journey to Ait Benhaddou. About half way along we stopped for lunch at the Gorge du Dades in the Dades valley, a green and fertile valley by the Dades River that flows through it giving life to a huge variety of colourful fruit and nut trees and extraordinary red rock formations. Mohamed told as about the surrounding Berber villages and their crumbling kasbahs lining the valley.

We went to a hotel for lunch and were serenaded by a lovely musician! Max was craving crepes and was very disappointed when what we thought were chocolate crepes (there was a picture of them in the menu) turned out to be honey! Mohamed randomly left for about 15-20 minutes and came back with a jar of Nutella for Max! He ordered her the pancake and this is when it was solidified that he was the best tour guide ever!! But there’s more! The next stop was the most amazing juice bar. They had ever kind one could think of, and we all got different flavours so everyone could swap because you got two glasses of each flavour you ordered!! What a nifty idea! (And they were delicious)

We were then on to Ait Benhaddou for a tour of the famous Kasbah, where Lawrence of Arabia was once filmed. Along the way we saw some of the movie sets where movies such as The Mummy, The Jewel of the Nile and Prince of Persia were filmed. We had some down time at the hotel and enjoyed swimming in the pool to cool off before the next tour group came along and crashed our party! But you will never guess who their tour guide was – Sideshow Bob! And we even snapped a photo!! 

I managed about a quarter of the tour of the Unesco-protected 11th century mud-brick kasbah, but then I had to go home because I was still unwell. However it was still beautiful to see (even managed to sneak in seeing the arena where Gladiator was filmed!). The rest of the group climbed the kasbah to a ruined agadir (fortified granary) with magnificent views of the surrounding palmeraie and unforgiving hammada (stony desert).

Tonight we enjoyed dinner at our hotel and it was such fun! Everyone was feeling a little bit better, conversation was flowing, everyone was laughing and spirits were high! Perhaps a highlight of the night was when Roisin was instructed to have her turn at pouring the tea the Moroccan way (basically pouring from a very high height). We all thought she had it in the bag, but then a big gust of wind came and blew the tea coming from the spout right back at her! It went everywhere!! Once we knew she was okay we could not stop laughing! To top it all off, Mohamed invited us all around to his house for a home cooked meal as we had missed out on a lot of the included meals in the tour. It was one of the most generous things I have ever heard – what a lovely thing to look forward to tomorrow!