a picture tells a thousand words

After the excitement of the camels and desert, we all slept like logs in our warm and comfortable beds. For some crazy reason Matt and I had decided that we wanted to go Quad biking in the morning. It wasn’t entirely crazy just because of the Quad biking but also because it meant that we had to have the earliest morning of the entire trip. We had to be breakfasted and ready to go at 7am.

They had asked for numbers at dinner the night before and at that time there had been around 14 people who were interested in going. But when we arrived down at the bus, ready to go, in the morning there were only three others waiting. It seems that the others had all, for various reasons, decided not to go after all.

Here's Matt and I on our quad bike. I'm driving!!

When we got off to take some photos, we then saw this warning message on the back of the bike. It made us laugh and Matt slightly concerned that I was driving.

We’d assumed that we’d just get to drive around on the bikes for a while, I actually wondered whether we’d just drive around the village, but instead they took us out behind the bike hire shop that turned out to be a course of sorts.

Picture out by a little creek - it was almost an oasis!

The Quad bike track was also behind Atlas Studios, which is one of the largest film studios in the world. While riding around on the bikes, we got to visit one of the sets used in Gladiator. I was amazed that these sets just sit there; unused; and that the studio allow people like us to wander all over them, messing them up.

We also didn’t realise how long the quad bike tour went for. And over two hours later we arrived back at the hotel, dusty, sweaty and laughing loads, and had to quickly pack our bags (well, I did, Matt had already packed his before we left) and meet everyone else back at the bus.

The bus took us to Aït Benhaddou, which is fortified city along what used to be a caravan route between the Sahara desert and Marrakech. It was a really beautiful spot that we had to get to by crossing a river. The river had bags of sand piled across to form a path, so it wasn’t too difficult to cross but there were local children there who tried to grab your hand and help you across, as they walked through the water in bare feet. We’d been warned that once we get to the other side, the children would then ask for money, so it was up to us as to whether we wanted to let them assist us or not. It was really difficult because there were so many that tried to grab your hand and I didn’t know what to do, so I didn’t let any of them help me across. I felt quite bad until one boy, who’d been given a coin by one of the other members of our group, didn’t like what he’d been given and hurled it back at our team member.

We walked up through the city, right to the top. It was a beautiful view from all angles.

The view from the top - looking down over the Kasbahs.

On the way back to Marrakech, our bus really seemed to struggle up the hills. At times we were worried that the rest of our tour group would take off and we’d be stuck in the middle of nowhere with a broken down bus. Then suddenly our bus driver stopped in what seemed to us to be a random village and was given a liquid in a soft drink plastic bottle, which he proceeded to empty into the fuel tank of the bus.

Wow, did the bus move after that. We all decided that the bus must have been given jet fuel, because it was overtaking every other vehicle on the road. It was amazing. The only reason why we weren’t the first group back to the hotel in Marrakech was because one of the other buses managed to squeeze their way through the Marrakech peak traffic to get in front of us.

That night we went to have dinner in the square in Marrakech. It was great and quite different to where we’d eaten for the rest of the tour. The restaurant was actually in the square, with big, long, tressle-like tables. They seated us where we could fit and brought food out randomly, whether we’d ordered it or not. It was a good laugh though.

It was warmer in Marrakech when we arrived back that afternoon as opposed to when we’d arrived from London. The nights didn’t seem to get that cold again, which was nice because Matt and I had been really cold that first night at the hotel. After dinner we all made our way back to our rooms to get some sleep and prepare for our last full day of the tour in Marrakech.