Well, who's counting, anyway?
Five of us jumped on an overnight bus headed to Marrakech and then on toward Ourzazate on Thursday night and wandered around the empty streets of Ourzazate at 7 am Friday morning as we waited for the city to wake up.
Ouarzazate, also known as "The Gateway to the Sahara," is home to North Africa's largest movie studios-- think Hollywood in Morocco. A plethora of famous movies were filmed there, but you can't expect me to remember a string of movies I've never seen; one title I recognized was Gladiator. Basically, however, all those movies with the stereotypical desert? Yup. Ouarzazate.
After breakfast, Darby mischievously asked me if I had my driver's license on me. I nodded and smiled, only imagining what she had up her sleeves.
"Let's rent a car!"
And rent a car we did! I laughed my way through process, bewildered by the fact that we could simply walk into an agency and ask to rent a car. I'm still several years away from the standard "25 years of age" to rent a car, but I had a valid driver's license and before long, I had signed a contract and we had rented a car, each of us chipping in $17 USD to cover the two days.
We enjoyed the freedom the car afforded us and we splurged.
"Oh, can you stop here? I want to take a picture."
"Oh, that's pretty. Let's stop."
"Ah! Let's have a picnic there."
Okay. Yup. Sure. Of course we'll stop.
And we finally made it to Skoura, the oasis known for a thousand palm trees. We drove through a beautiful gorge and admired incredible red rock formations; we hiked into a small valley and climbed around old kasbah (castle/fortress) ruins and took lots of pictures. We stopped and walked through the area with the palm trees and enjoyed the view. Funny how I knew that this was the Morocco I knew people had pictured I'd be living in.
We eventually headed toward our hostel about 20 minutes outside of Ouarzazate. It was a beautiful hostel and even had a swimming pool. I was amazed by the strong, strong winds when we arrived. We enjoyed a chill night in the hotel and then had a slow start in the morning. We explored the surrounding area some, wandered through some more kasbah ruins and eventually headed back toward a massive kasbah that has been used in movies such as Gladiator, Lawrence of Arabia, and Babel.
On our way back to Ourzazate, we picked up a hitchhiker and he told us about his travels in Morocco. A Moroccan, totally in love with his country. What a wonderful experience. He assured me that it was safe to hitchhike and I realized that the most dangerous part about picking up this hitchhiker was planting that idea in my head.
We dropped him off in Ourzazate and headed toward Agdz. The road was super windy and I got plenty of practice driving through curvy mountain roads. We stopped to pick up a man by the side of the road who's car was broken down. He was a sweet Berber man and with his really broken English, our French and Arabic we managed to communicate all the way to Agdz. Upon arriving in Agdz, he insisted we come to his house for tea, which we agreed to.
We enjoyed some tea with him and his cousin. These men were Saharan traders. Apparently, they were on their way to Mauritania-- a trip that would take them 30 days by camel. What? Is this real life? They traveled all around Africa and showed us their goods and explained that they trade with cash and with goods. They were true desert dwellers and invited us to spend a night in the desert with them some time.
Maybe someday :)
We headed back to Ouarzazate, had some dinner, killed some time, turned our car in and then headed toward the bus station. Sunday morning rolled around and we arrived in Rabat-- exhausted, but totally satisfied.
Ps- If you'd like to see more pictures, hop on over to Gabby's blog. She took some great pictures :)
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