Ouarzazate

Beautiful scenery - but what is this gate for?
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We drove to Ouarzazate along the Route of 1000 Kasbahs, although to be honest it wasn’t all that impressive!

Our campsite was very crowded and very basic – actually we thought it crowded when we arrived, then they let another 20 or so camping cars in!

my recommendation of Ouarzazate is - don’t bother.

We visited a ‘cooperative’ which was making carpets and various other handicrafts and selling them at fixed prices – good to get an idea of realistic prices before hitting the souks! We came out with three carpets :-)

We also had a look at the kasbah which, due to its position in the valley was used to collect (extract?) taxes from ‘caravans’ heading towards the High Atlas mountains from the desert.

The other ‘attractions’ of the town are the movie studios and a very large kasbah about 20kms out of the city, neither of which we visited. While we didn’t see everything there was too see – my recommendation of Ouarzazate is - don’t bother.

Dave.