 About Our Trip
After a longer time around the rough nature of the Cascades d’Ouzoud and the before standing excursion to the desert, a hotel with own bathrooms and a swimming pool seemed like a good idea.
In Ouarzazate we’ll be staying at the very nice hotel Zagro for 4 nights. Ouarzazat is quite a modern town and often considered as a good starting point if travelling down to the Sahara.
Here we will mostly relax and prepare for our journey to the desert. Never the less there are a few visits organised around the place. One of them is a trip to the Ouarzazate Film Studios, where "Asterix and Cleopatra" or "The Sheltering Sky" have been filmed.
An other visit will go to the beautiful Taourirt Kasbah and the Mellah, the old Jewish quarter.
About Ourzazate
Ouarzazate is the most important of the southern towns and is strategically located at a crossroads that joins the north to the south and the east to the west. Where the roads between the Drâa, Dadés and Ziz valleys cross, Ourzazate marks the beginning of the great journey by dazzling the traveller with two magnificent kasbahs.
Taourirt, the former residence of the Glaoui, is frighteningly beautiful. A series of towers rising out of a mass of closely packed houses, thrusting their turrets into the blue sky.
Aït Benhaddou is 30 kilometres from the town. Just imagine a fabulous sandcastle transported to stand in the middle of a field of flowering almond trees. So beautiful and playing so artfully with the light that it has often been used as a setting for films such as "Lawrence of Arabia" and "Un Thé au Sahara".
Indeed, this Kasbah is so exceptional that UNESCO has given it world heritage status.
Ouarzazate also houses its film studios and therefore makes the city the Hollywood of Morocco. The point of departure for the road to the oases, Ouarzazate is also the destination for a wealth of produce and craftwork. Every Sunday, in the souk, can be found an abundance of henna, roses, cumin and distilled wormwood together with Berber pottery, carved stone objects, blankets and the blue and golden yellow motifs of the famous Ouzguita carpets. Generous, welcoming and amazingly different, it serves as a gentle introduction to the powerful emotions that lie ahead in the desert. |
