Saturday, March 9, 2019
We slept in today after our marathon travel day, and went down for breakfast at 9 am. The spread was lavish, with multiple pastries, pancakes, omelets, yogurt, cheese and fresh orange juice. We took a quick walk back to Jemma el Fnaa square to check out the morning action (definitely not as much) before arriving at the Henna Art Cafe for our 11 am reservation.
The kids and I flipped through the design book, and each chose a design for ourselves. Mallory and I chose more elaborate designs that extended from our hands up our arms, and Liam chose a smaller design for his forearm. The henna did not take long for the artists to complete, perhaps 15-20 minutes, but did take a while to dry in front of a heat lamp.
We went back to Dar Essalam for our things, left the medina again, and met Abdul at 12:30 for the trip to Ait Ben Haddou. The drive took us through the countryside and up over the Atlas Mountains. The High Atlas around us were still snow capped. The highest point of our trip was at Tizi n Tichka.
We pulled over at multiple vantage points for photos, souvenir stalls, for Abdul to explain the local Berber village way of life, etc. We also stopped in a small village to buy some fresh oranges, which were delicious.
We drove the last 6 km to Ait Ben Haddou off-road, which frankly was not all that interesting nor exciting, though it was nice of Abdul to make so many suggestions of things to see and do to add some variety to our itinerary.
At Ait Ben Haddou, we were met in the parking area by the proprietor of Kasbah Tebi, Mohammed, with a mule that carried our luggage down the hill, across the river, and up into the Kasbah.
We followed along and jumped across the rocks that made up a pedestrian bridge.
We settled into the Kasbah, which does not have electricity, with more tea and cookies before heading out to hike up to the top of Ait Ben Haddou at sunset.
The colours of the rock with the late day sun were truly stunning.
While I wouldn’t call it ‘busy’, there were still a fair number of people out and about. As it started to get dark we headed back to Kasbah Tebi, which is located inside the Ait Ben Haddou complex.
Once we were back at the Kasbah, we had dinner by candlelight. Dinner was a puréed vegetable soup, brochettes of beef and chicken, vegetable tajine and bread, with fruit and cookies for dessert. The food was ok, but not memorable. We retired early since there is not a lot to do without light and we were tired enough to sleep, though we did have fun lighting candles for the alcoves around our room. We did not have any wifi service at the Kasbah due to either its remote location or the poor reception from the thick cave-like walls.
A few housekeeping details that may be of interest: Kasbah Tebi does have electricity in the dining area (though no overhead lights), and we were able to use a wall outlet to charge our camera batteries there. I understand the Kasbah is currently being wired, and we did see several switch plates about that I assume will eventually light and power the place. Finally, I mentioned wifi. We just purchased an international mifi device called a GlocalMe. This was the first trip we used it for, and it worked like a charm, so long as we had cellular reception.
Cook Family Travels 