From our oasis site in Agadz to Ouazarzate is only 40 miles but it takes around 2 hours because of the mountain passes in between. Visibility on the day is excellent so we can take in the barren landscape stretching right to the horizon. There is no sign of life on the hillsides and even the road is deserted. It could be the surface of the moon. We decide to stop at the top of one of the passes to take some photos and it is chilly. So how surprising is this? As we are rolling to a stop at this isolated spot, a figure leaps over the road retaining wall bearing a chameleon and two iguanas. “Photo, or you want buy, I do very cheap price.” As I said in the previous blog, in Morocco there’s always a salesman lying in wait for you.
Ouazarzate Camping Municipal is a standard, functional site, just like the town itself, which was built by the French in the late 1920s as a garrison and administrative centre. The main advantage of staying here is that good day trips can be made in all directions. The first of these was to Ait Benhaddou, a UNESCO World Heritage site.
It’s the ultimate kasbah, used a film set many times, with narrow passages, rooms and staircases everywhere, set in a beautiful location on a hillside with a river running at its foot. There are, as expected, the tourist shops full of everything you have seen elsewhere but there are also some inhabited dwellings which for a small tip you can look round and marvel at the medieval style of living. The photo shows the sort of alleyway found throughout the kasbah.
Ait Benhaddou was on the main camel train route over the high Atlas linking Marrakech with the communities on the edge of the desert and beyond, often as far as the southern Sahara. Local warlords called the Glaoui controlled sections of these routes and levied tolls in return for protection. The power of the Glaoui continued in some parts until the 1930s when the French were able to fully establish their authority by military force. The French also built a metalled road over the Atlas at that time, today’s main road, and that finished off the camel train route almost at a stroke.
When is a castle not a castle? Here in the wilderness it really looks the part: it could be a crusader stronghold in the Holy Land. It’s a film set, and the next snap shows the right-hand section of the castle from the other side. It is built from lightweight plaster panels supported by scaffolding.
The whole construction contained many different sets in different styles and time periods but are all vaguely medieval. The face sides of the sets are incredibly realistic but having served their purpose, part were starting to fall into decay. Presumably, should another film require their usage, they would be patched up rather like buildings are in real life when they are once more needed to be in the spotlight. The following are some examples of these sets:
There are several active studios in the area and films like Lawrence of Arabia, Gladiator, Black Hawk Down, Alexander the Great, Kingdom of Heaven, and Kundun were shot here. The filmmakers are certainly well off for cheap extras, look how well iguana man from above, for instance, would have fitted into an Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves movie.
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