Tazentout & Aït Ben Haddou

On day 2 of our Morocco journey we drove south as far as Tazentout. Since we were really fed up with the bad weather, there was no question that we wanted to get to sunny and warm weather as quickly as possible. It was a bit too far to reach our unofficial first goal Zagora in one day, so we checked the map for acceptable distances and then picked the best campsite we could find on Park4Night.
That is how we ended up in Tazentout at Camping L´Escale de Ouarzazate.

But first we had to drive and were really surprised by how green Morocco is, especially in the north. Unfortunately, we also saw first hand the havoc the extreme weather had wreaked: many times we saw huge "lakes" of water where farmland was supposed to be and small creeks were vast rivers. This continued for hours and it was really shocking. We can only assume that the livelihood of many Moroccans is at risk or completely gone.

Once we had passed the flooded areas we were surprised by the excellent state the streets, especially the toll roads, were in. I wish Germany had such good Autobahnen ;) It certainly made it much easier than expected to make good progress and we reached the Atlas Mountains seemingly in no time after we passed Marrakech. The Tizi n'Tichka pass is a beautiful drive with stunning views and we made it mostly with daylight. It's a good and safe pass, but some Moroccan drivers are a bit crazy, so it's best to drive very defensively!

Just after sunset we arrived at the camp and were absolutely happy with our choice. We were warmly welcomed by the host and had free choice of pitch. We parked, had dinner, strolled around the campsite a couple of times and fell asleep after we marvelled at the night sky full of stars!

The next day we drove to Aït Ben Haddou, a UNESCO world heritage site which is frequently featured in movies of all kinds including Gladiator, The Passion of the Christ and the TV show Game of Thrones. It is a very pretty site and looks stunning from afar. The closer you get, however, the more you see that it's not being kept very well. It is filled with little shops and vendors, but it's still worth a visit. Of course we fell into a tourist trap by taking the wrong entrance and were asked to pay 20 DH. We paid only to find out it was for access to one of the towers. Was it worth 20 DH? Maybe not, then again we are talking about less than 2 €, so not exactly the end of the world.

Once we felt we had seen enough we slowly walked back to Wilma and drove to Zagora ☀️