Morocco, part 5: Aït Benhaddou

"Take me to the kasbah." Who said that? Seems like a familiar movie phrase. Made us want to go to the well preserved and much filmed kasbah in Aït Benhaddou. You may have seen it in the films "Lawrence of Arabia" or "Gladiator."



Here's a closeup of one section with plenty of greenery.



We stayed in a hotel just across the river, visible in this photo. (The kasbah is in the foreground, and the hotel is in the distance.)



An unofficial guide showed us around. He said animals live in the straw-roof section pictured below while their keepers lived in the rooms above. Having invented his own guide spiel, he pointed out such designs as the crescent moon and said, "That's the moon." So informative.



The whole place is made of earth mixed with straw. It features many towers decorated with tall, narrow, window-like designs, sometimes surrounded by a trellis-looking design. Our pseudo-guide told us that the geometric shapes all had meanings. Then again, he also just made stuff up. He told us the small, narrow building at the top of the hill was the queen's house, whereas our guidebook described it as a granary.



In any case, the place has lots of atmosphere, and we enjoyed the visit.

Morocco, part four: Ouarzazate

Continuing on our Moroccan drive, we headed west toward Ouarzazate. We stopped for lunch outside of the oasis town of Skoura, at Chez Talout. The tasty food may have given us mild intestinal issues later.



Ouarzazate is the center of the Moroccan film industry. Many films you've probably seen were filmed there, including Lawrence of Arabia, Ben Hur, Gladiator, The Mummy (1, 2 and 3), and Kundun. We visited Atlas film studios, one of the most prominent studios in the country. Here we saw the plane from Jewel of the Nile. It doesn't actually fly; it only drives.



These arches were used in Gladiator and reused in other films.



This huge complex was built for Kundun, a film about the Dalai Lama.



These columns were seen in Gladiator as well as The Mummy.



Here's a miniature version of Abu Simbel temple, used in The Mummy. (We went to the real Abu Simbel in Egypt back in 2008.)



This shot shows how flimsy some of the set decorations are. It looks like these pieces on the capitals are made of thin paper. I believe this was a reuse of either a Gladiator or Mummy set for the French film Asterix and Obelisk.



We're posing on the Kundun set with the camera dolly, which allows for smooth shooting when the camera is in motion.