Morocco: Aït Benhaddou, Dades, Todra Gorges

Day 4: Off we went the next day to Aït Benhaddou, a fortified UNESCO World Heritage Site (1987). We stopped for lunch in new town, since as a UNESCO site nothing else can be built there. That was the one down side to the tour, is that often for lunch we didn't have a choice of what we ate, and were stuck with overpriced meals. Besides the food though, which was still good (and we got Couscous for the first time!), we were able to explore Aït Benhaddou, where tons of movies and television shows were filmed, like Game of Thrones. The gate-like structure on the right of the picture below is actually not a part of the original Aït Benhaddou site, but was built for a movie. However, they couldn't take it down because between it's construction and when they would tear it down, Aït Benhaddou was declared a UNESCO site so they couldn't take it down!

Gladiator was also filmed here, however all that is left is empty land and this pile of dirt (below). They build the coliseum and tore it down the day after filming.

On the way to the top of the old city of Aït Benhaddou, we got to see an old method of art, sometimes also used to write secret messages. By using herb water and oil, then letting it dry, people were able to create art and secret messages that were only revealed by then slightly burning the paper (see picture below for idea). It was amazing to watch the process, and I was so tempted to buy one...but didn't.

The view from the top of the hill, where the oldest building of the place stand, was amazing. We could really see where old town and new town started of Aït Benhaddou.

We stopped on the way to our resting place at Dades Gorges. It was a windy road and I slept for most of it, trying to fight of carsickness.

Unfortunately at the place we ended up staying the night, Brad and I potentially got bedbugs! I got three in a straight line across my back and Brad got 4 down his arm. I also got one on my inner leg, but it was so big I think it was a spider bite or something else. We didn't realize at first, but thankfully we had been sorting our dirty and clean clothes so everything was kept separate. Plus, we had already organized our clothes for the desert (because we could only take 1 bag each into the desert and we were just going to use my backpack). When we got home from the trip, we didn't even fully bring everything inside the apartment. We stripped inside the hallway, carefully placing everything that wasn't already in plastic bags in plastic bags. I grabbed euros and laundry detergent and we booked it to a laundromat and washed and dried everything on high. We were lucky that we either didn't bring any with us or we killed them all.

Back to the trip...

DAY 5

On the way to the Sahara Desert, we stopped at the Todra Gorges. This huge canyon was carved over hundreds of years by the Todra River. It was beautiful and probably my favorite pit stop on our journey.

On our way to the desert we also saw wild camels and other beautiful landscapes:

That's one thing I really love about Morocco is the diversity in environment. There's the ocean, the desert, forests, mountains...so much beauty in so many different ways.

Finally...we made it to the Sahara Desert for New Year's Eve!

Off we went to Aït Benhaddou