Our Moroccan road trip through the countryside turned out to be some of the most perfect days of our trip so far--which is especially great, because it had the potential to be really stressful!
Our journey took us through the Atlas Mountains and into the desert. There are a lot of ways you might plan your route, but rather than take a bus and be limited by their timetables or go with a pricey adventure tour company, we decided to make the drive ourselves. We planned to rent a car (from the Marrakech airport, so we wouldn't have to drive through the busy city center) and make our way at our own leisurely pace through the High Atlas Mountains pausing to visit little towns along the way. Our end goal is Merzouga: the last caravan stop before the Sahara Desert.
However, as anyone who has rented a car while traveling overseas knows, it's complicated. There are a lot of things that could go wrong when you don't know the traffic rules, aren't familiar with how people drive, are a stranger to the area and need to navigate as you go...the list goes on. And beyond how you yourself might mess things up, there are other drivers. Driving in Morocco is pretty aggressive and, if you're not used to it, kind of scary. If there are traffic laws, people don't really seem to follow them. In cities, it's a free for all between drivers who never signal and instead prefer to communicate by honk, whizzing taxi cabs who seem to race each other in competition for fares, motorcycles and cyclists who take advantage of their compact size to zig zag around the whole crazy mess, and the pedestrians just trying not to be run over. Our experience with the countryside so far has been limited, but it doesn't seem all that different. Although there are fewer folks on the road, that means most cars just ignore the lines altogether and drive straight in the middle, resulting in some terrifying games of chicken when you encounter a car coming from the opposite direction. Also, people almost seem to prefer to pass one another along blind corners. Perhaps for the adrenaline rush?
Luckily, we were pretty prepared for this. As reckless as Moroccan driving might seem, it's still nothing compared to India, Mongolia, or Vietnam, places we've encountered on previous adventures. We had a basic idea of what we might be dealing with, and did everything we could think of to ensure our road-trip would be safe and hassle-free. Nate did many hours of research before we left: he learned the basic driving rules, almost memorized our route, downloaded offline maps so Rachael could navigate for him with the GPS, made sure we had plenty of travel insurance so we could cover even the most disastrous accident, learned about how to handle police if we were stopped for speeding (pro tip: do not pay a "tip" for them to look the other way and take the full ticket instead, but ask for a receipt! You can show it to the station in the next town to make sure you were fairly charged--and they'll be less likely to inflate the price as a result!), and read many accounts of other travel bloggers who had made similar trips. He printed duplicated copies of every piece of paperwork we might possibly need.
Perhaps because we were so prepared for every worst-case scenario, we (Nate especially, as he was our designated driving encyclopedia) woke up this morning with butterflies in our tummies. What if we were late getting to the airport to pick up our car? What if the car wasn't reliable and it broke down? What if we got hit by someone? Preoccupied with "what ifs," it took us a while to notice that everything was going perfectly to plan. At exactly the right time, we found ourselves in possession of a cute little Fiat Panda (a car we saw thousands of last summer in Italy and always wanted to drive!) that comfortably fit all our things, drove smoothly, and--most importantly--had perfectly working air conditioning. Our plan to avoid the worst of Marrakech traffic worked too; we found that as long as we stayed steady and predictable, the other cars could weave around us safely and we made it to out of the city and onto the highway with no problems.
And what a highway! The Atlas Mountains are lovely: painted in sunset colors and breathtakingly huge, with mountains upon mountains fading into the distance (our little camera couldn't capture how perfect everything was, but that didn't stop us from trying!). Rachael said she had never seen mountains that reminded her more of C.S. Lewis' heavenly city that went "further up and further in." We had such a fun drive through the mountains that we forgot to be worried about anything. We just enjoyed the winding roads that made Nate feel like a race car driver, the wonderful scenery, and a great playlist.
We got to Aït Benhaddou around 3pm, but the drive had been so eventful that it felt like a full day and we were pretty tired--especially driver Nate. Still, we rallied and after finding our guesthouse, we made our way to the ancient ruin from which the town gets its name. Located in the southern foothills of the high Atlas Mountains, Aït Benhaddou is a former caravan stop between the Sahara and Marrakech. The ksar, Arabic for "castle" or fortified village, is built on a hill to allow the watch tower at the top a view of the surrounding plain--both to protect the city from invaders and incoming caravans from bandits.
Aït Benhaddou is a famous example of pre-Saharan earthen architecture--so much so that it's been featured in various films, such as The Mummy, Gladiator, Prince of Persia, Game of Thrones...the list goes on. Basically, whenever Hollywood needs an old-timey Arab village as a backdrop, they go to Aït Benhaddou. The oldest building in the striking red ksar appears to have been built around the 17th century, but the techniques used in all the buildings were inherited from a much earlier period. Made from a core of mud bricks and rocks and covered in a plaster made with earth and straw, the buildings are vulnerable to the elements; the walls are therefore extremely thick, sometimes up to a meter, and need regular repair. The ksar fell into disrepair for many years as more and more families began moving out of the traditional buildings to a newer and more convenient modern settlement on the other side of the river, but in 1987 Aït Benhaddou was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site and was partially restored using traditional building methods and materials.
We had a lot of fun exploring all the nooks and crannies of the old ksar and taking in the sweeping views from the watch tower--this time, with the help of a local guide (something we almost never do, but he helped us find our Air B&B when we got totally lost so we felt like we owed him!). Our guide Nassim had grown up in the new city across the river from the ksar and, in our conversations between the formal tour, he had a lot of interesting things to say about the tension local inhabitants feel between maintaining Aït Benhaddou as an important historical and cultural site and modernizing to improve their quality of life. The entire economy of the new village is built on tourism, and tourists come to a place to experience "authentic" culture and village life, but that may not be what's actually comfortable for the villagers themselves. For those who've grown up in the village, there is also the difficult choice whether to stay and try to make a living on uncertain and unsteady (but potentially profitable) work as a guide or hotelier, or to move to a larger city where there are more opportunities. In the end, we were glad we let ourselves get talked into a tour. Nassim didn't have much radically new information about the old ksar and he definitely steered us into shops owned by his friends at every opportunity in hopes we'd buy something and he'd make a cut, but the insight into life as an exhibit, so to speak, was definitely worth the 150 dirhams.
By the way, Aït Benhaddou sunsets are pretty killer.
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