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Our journey from Todra Gorge to Ait Benhaddou took us through "Mollywood" - Morocco's movie making capital. It was another scorching day and I was feeling a little overwhelmed by the heat, but rallied the energy for a tour of the movie studio open for visitors. We walked through sets from movies such as "Gladiator", "Prince of Persia", "Kundun", "Alexander", "Kingdom of Heaven" and a remake of "Ben Hur". Part of the studio was closed to us as filming was in progress for a new movie - "The Bible". Dale was particularly impressed by what the set designers had achieved using polystyrene and fibreglass. He spent most of the tour knocking on objects to determine if they were 'real' or not.
At yet another mint tea stop we were sitting looking out over a stream with a steep rocky incline above, when suddenly a torrent of black goats began to pour over the near vertical cliff face. Even the littlest of the herd bounced from rock to rock as easily as I would descend a staircase. In less than a minute the forerunners had reached the bottom and were delicately sipping at the stream. Still the avalanche of goats continued, on and on, until there must have been over 100 of them filling the narrow stream bed.
Ait Benhaddou is a world heritage village. What else? Honestly, I don't know since when we arrived at our hotel I went to bed with a splitting headache. Dale went with group to look around the place, the only information he brought back for me was that the village was where parts of "Prince of Persia" and "Gladiator" were filmed. Of more concern to me were the swarm of flies spiralling around our room. Dale earned his black belt in fly extermination that night!
Some extra strong nurofen later I was able to sit upright at dinner. After the usual serving of bread, olives and vegetable soup (pumpkin this time I think), dishes of couscous with chicken and vegetables, turkey and egg tagine, and chicken and prune tagine, were set out in front of us. The food was some of the tastiest we have had so far and was followed with fresh rock melon and oranges.
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