A Moroccan Road Trip: Part 2 of 6

It was the two Spanish hitchhikers I picked up on the outskirts of Ait Benhaddou that diverted my path.

Ait Benhaddou was my first stop on the way from Ourika Valley to Merzouga to see the Saharan dunes, and it was a stop for the Spaniards after a desert music festival.

As far as a tourist town goes, Ait Benhaddou was a strange one. The town and hotels are on one side of an intermittent and rocky river, the tourist attracting fortified town (the Kasbah) on the other. A desert sanctuary surrounded by scorched earth.

There were both locals and tourists around, but the town still had a strange desolation. I couldn’t tell how much of that was normal, seasonal, or due a recent earthquake in the nearby Atlas Mountains keeping people away.

The manager of my auberge blamed the empty plunge pool on the earthquake, so maybe it did have something to do with it.

On the morning of the hitchhikers, I woke early to catch the rising sun hit the walls of the Kasbah, parking at a café that overlooked the kasbah and riverbed below.

The morning still was broken by the sound of gunshots reverberating off the surrounding hills and the yelping of dogs, as two men with rifles took to killing the stray dogs that lived around the gates of the Kasbah.

Once the dogs had scattered, the men strolled along the river below me picking off dogs that hadn’t taken the hint to clear off entirely.

They shot one in the body from a distance, injured but didn’t kill it, then walked off without finishing the job, joking and laughing as they went.

The tourists trickling out of the surrounding auberges and picking their way across the riverbed to the Kasbah seemed unbothered by the scene.

It was brutally surreal.

The sun hitting the Kasbah wasn’t amazing from my vantage point and I left town shortly after another bready Moroccan breakfast, which consists of bread, served with sides of bread, some Moroccan mint tea. And more bread.

I encountered the Spaniards on the edge of town. We were all headed to Ouarzazate. They needed to catch a once-weekly plane back to Spain and I needed a cash machine before heading to the desert town of Merzouga to see Erg Chigaga, the tallest dunes in Morocco.

Meeting Spaniards in Ait Benhaddou was an odd serendipity I didn’t notice until much later; the Kasbah was a location in movie Gladiator, starring Russell Crowe. Something the locals waste no time telling you when you arrive.  

In the movie, Russell’s character was nicknamed The Spaniard…The girls didn’t look like gladiators, more like dusty road-worn survivors of the apocalypse who had just finished enjoying an end of days rave. Gritty from the desert, but still friendly.

And I’ve been told I look a little like Russell. Personally, I don’t see it but for the sake of adding interest to the story, I’ll add the reference.

An Australian travelling with Spaniards in Ait Benhaddou sounds marginally more interesting when it’s an Australian Russell Crowe doppelganger travelling with Spaniards…

The diversion happened simply enough; yes, there were Saharan sand dunes in Merzouga, they explained, but there were also dunes in M'Hamid.

Merzouga is an eight-hour drive and M'Hamid was five hours. And there are fewer tourists at M’Hamid.

I try to avoid fixed itineraries when travelling, allowing the people I meet and chance to guide my way. What was I to do?

Stay on course and head to the tallest dunes at Erg Chigaga or let the Spaniards sway me?

We said our goodbyes on the dusty streets of Ouarzazete.

The prospect of fewer tourists and the urging of the Spaniards sealed it, I was bound for M’Hamid.