My Europe Trip - pt.3 Ouarzazate

Our next destination was Ouarzazate, which meant 7 hours on the road, in a hot car.

We stopped at a few places. One of them was at a truck stop restaurant. There, we experienced our first real tagine, served in a tagine (something like a pot). It was still cooking when they brought it out to us. Finished that with some ice-cream, then back on the road.

Another of our stops was a small shop on the side of a mountain road. The owner was squeezing fresh orange juice so we bought some. Because the oranges were the first of the season, the juice tasted like the guy had squeezed oranges, then added sugar. It was amazingly refreshing.

Fast forward a little bit to when we arrived in our destination in Ouarzazate. We had booked a little apartment for us to stay in. We got there straight away and were welcomed in. At first, it looked like a really nice apartment - a nice lounge, a clean kitchen and stairs to the roof. When we started looking closer (and when the guy had left), we saw dirt, old food, no toilet paper, cockroaches and oh boy the smell. Every 5 minutes or so, we would get a waft of sewer smell. It wasn’t pleasant.

We tried to get to sleep and eventually, we did. We awoke to the smell of sewers and the Moroccan heat. I was feeling really sick that day, so I was making many trips upstairs to try and get some fresh air. We left without breakfast and went to go explore the Kasbah. By that time, I was feeling horrible, as if I was about to throw up.

Well, I got through the morning without throwing up. The Kasbah was really amazing. First, we looked at a gallery full of all these handmade paintings. Most of them were watercolour. After the gallery, we climbed up stairs to the top of the Kasbah. The view was amazing - full of old, mud houses. Here is a photo of the view from the top of the Kasbah:

After the Kasbah, we finally drove around for a place to eat. We (actually, I had no input) chose a small restaurant on the side of the road. While trying not to breathe in all the fumes, we chose to share a tagine with salads. I couldn’t really enjoy it because of the way I was feeling, but what I can say is that the flavour was on point.

We ate and we talked, and decided that we’d split up for 2 nights. Myself, mum, dad and brother stayed in a hotel in Ouarzazate, while my aunty, uncle and cousins went to the desert. The hotel we stayed in that night was really nice. It had a really cold outdoor pool, good internet, and a nice room to stay in and recover. We went in the pool for a while, then rinsed off and basically watched Netflix for the rest of the night. By that time, I was feeling way better.

It was around 6.30pm when we started feeling hungry. We went down to the dining area and were told that dinner wasn’t to be served until 8.30pm. We couldn’t have waited any longer, so we ordered some salad and bread. That was just what we needed, in fact, we even ordered another plate.

We filled up on that, then went back to our room and stayed in for the rest of the night. We went to sleep, and woke up the next day (wow!). That was the best sleep I’d had in weeks.

Before you could say Ouarzazate, we were back in the car, this time taking a trip to the Mhamid desert.