Ouarza- what? Oooh, my stomach

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Somewhere between the High Atlas Mountains, and their snow covered caps, Antoine poisoned me with tap water. I will get back to that in a couple minutes. At 2750m, we stopped to take pictures and that turned into a snow ball fight. The road to Ouarzazate looks like a three year old scribbled on the map, and every 15 seconds you make a sudden turn along the side of a giant mountain. Every five minutes a medieval bus of the Moroccan transit system tries to run you off the road. Four hours later, we find ourselves in Ouarzazate. Kouidre and I are looking worse for wear and after getting to the hotel, Kouidre begins to sleep for 20 straight hours. Antoine, Ludo and I eat at a café and return to the room early for some rest and relaxation. Its bitterly cold at night, and the sun sets quickly and the city turns to ice. We getting closer to the dessert, and farther from the moderating oceans. The land is barren and flat, and in the distance, camel-coloured mountains break into the sky. Ouarzazate is small, but full of hidden gems. The Kasbah, five kilometers out of town, is alive and functioning and for 10 dh we are able to check out the the Palace, which is a twisting labyrinth of rooms and archways. you have to bend over not to hit your head on the ceilings and in some places, you have to crawl. It's beautiful, it's fantastic, it's real. We run around the place like little children exploring a new tree fort. We find our way out and stand in the courtyard giggling for ten minutes. Ouarzazate has a large Berber population, for a small town, and there are a million brightly coloured carpets for sale, however, the car is already bursting with stuff and there is no way to get one in the trunk, or the back seat.

We visit the film studios, and we see where gladiator, Astérix and a whole host of blockbuster movies were made. Its an entire center of fake things, build in the shadows of reality. There's even a fake souq! I keep asking myself why they bothered to build it all, when the real thing is right there, and why rich Russians with expensive cameras travelled all the way to the middle of nowhere to take pictures of fake worlds.

At dusk we set out in a fool-hearted mission to the dessert.

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