Kasbah The Not So Friendly Host

---

We enjoyed a morning lounging in bed and avoiding getting dressed in a very cold room. Just as we were about to get up someone knocked at our door to remind us checkout time was in fifteen minutes. When Rob reminded him we were staying two nights, he didn't even apologise for disturbing us.

Once we were up we went into the souqs in search of bread and cheese for our picnic. We found baguettes easily enough but the only cheese we could find was at the overpriced supermarket for westerners. We tried a few of the cremeries which are little more than a counter serving everything you can think of. When we asked for cheese all they could produce were triangles of Dairylea. We did eventually find a place that sold us some edam along with a few other picnic goodies. For future reference if you want something other than Dairylea you should ask for Fromage Rouge.

Ouarzazate itself may not be altogether interesting; however the Kasbah just out of town is very pretty. It has been restored by UNESCO so you can walk around it and see it as it was. You have to pay 10dh to get in which we didn’t mind, but then there were plenty of people offering to guide you around for a fee. We obviously chose to go around on our own, but most people paid for the guides. Walking around unguided was fun because we explored all the little passageways and staircases, even if most of them resulted in a locked door. Unfortunately most of the rest of the Kasbah was inaccessible but maybe UNESCO will do something with it in the future, there was a lot of work being done on it.

Lonely Planet suggests a 1.5km walk from the Kasbah to a dam next to a lake. This sounded like a really good idea and we planned to eat our lunch sitting on the dam. We walked for quite a distance until we saw water on the horizon at this we turned and began to walk towards it. We passed through a working village where tiny mud huts sat in the middle of farm land and everyone said "Bonjour", especially the children. We were looked at very strangely by the groups of older women and most stopped talking when we walked past. Our solution was to smile, say Bonjour and hurry past to the next group of people.

We got to the edge of the water but couldn't see a dam anywhere. We saw something that may have been it except it was too far away to walk. Rob was getting grumpy because with all of our walking we had forgotten to eat our picnic so we stopped and found two stones to sit on. We sat and watched the ants getting our crumbs and watched with apprehension as a group of kids got nearer and nearer. Eventually the children were so close and daring each other to say something to us so we decided it was time to move on before they inevitably began asking for Dirhams.

We walked back a slightly different route although it was definitely less friendly. We stopped off in the main square and decided to visit the Salon de The for a romantic thimble of mint tea. It has a nice terrace where you can sit and watch people around the square which we did.

By the time we had showered and changed it was too late to go anywhere nice to eat or we would have been completely alone. Instead we opted for a local café style place with the surliest service around. The food was ok and it passed the evening nicely so that when we returned to the hotel room we could get straight into bed.

---