Ouarzazate & Aït Benhaddou

The next two days were full drive days past snow-capped mountains.

On the first day we stopped at Ouarzazate for two hours where the next two cook groups (mine included) had to shop. It was a small village, it was their holy day (Friday), and it was lunchtime so we struggled to find groceries. There were only a couple of fruit and veg stalls open at the covered market, and we went with the cheapest one. He also had good quality produce. We have sheets we have to fill out for Kristy with the details of everything we’ve bought. We found out the price per kilo of each fruit and veggie we wanted, and then the shopkeeper weighed them and told us the price for each. We then added the total up ourselves and he had complete faith in our sums.

There was only one shop selling meat and it was whole chicken which we decided not to get. After lunch - a freshly squeezed OJ and vegetarian tagine - but before the sweet mint tea, I ran up the road to try to find the nearby butcher our waiter told us about. Time was running out (as it turns out we got the time wrong anyway and ended up being ½ hour late – oops!) I managed to find the butcher thankfully, and bought over 2.6kg of turkey mince (cheaper than beef mince or turkey and beef mince mixed together). This meant we could stick to our original plan of spaghetti and meatballs. Elated, I ran back through the main square with my bag of mince. Not surprisingly, some of the locals were laughing at me. It must’ve been a strange sight. No-one really runs through their village in the first place, and particularly not with a mad grin, proudly carrying a bag of mince, on their holy day.

We drove on past the film studios to Aït Benhaddou, a fortified city and UNESCO World Heritage Site, which has been used in many movie sets such as Lawrence of Arabia and more recently, Gladiator.

A local showed us around and told us he’d appeared in a few films. I think his toothy smile would’ve most definitely given him the edge over other extras!