hello kids.
here we are, back at home after our whirlwind trip of a little bit of morocco. still spins me out that you can have breakfast in marrakech (fresh bread, honey, coffee and freshly squeezed orange juice on a rooftop terrace) and dinner in east grinstead (spagetti carbonara), but anyway, to start at the beginning...
the madness of marrakech
started promisingly with our little ritual of being ripped off royaly by the taxi driver who dumped us rather unceremoniously at the edge of the medina (old city). it was immediately obvious that my western map reading skills (although very good :) were going to be pretty well useless in the crazy maze of covered narrow alleys ahead of us. but i think the ratio is roughly 1 cashed up, bewildered tourist to 10 streetwise moroccans and we had a self appointed guide in no time and in we dived to the labyrith of the medina past little stalls of offal (that's all i noticed actually, offal and more offal), through secret laneways to a rather unlikely door ready to be warmly welcomed into our lush accommodation, but, sadly, no one was home : (
unlikely door in unlikely lane
somehow we managed to understand that we were to wait in a nearby riad and drink mint tea with lethal sugar levels (no-one spoke english at this point) for how long we were unsure so we tried to learn french for a couple of hours until we were collected (none the wiser) by our profusely apologetic host Omar.
It was worth the wait though as we were taken into an absolutely gorgeous riad (riad: traditional moroccan home with a central courtyard) with a very chilled out vibe, white washed walls with hints of lilac arranged around a big orange tree. we signed in in purple pens and went into our room which was all dark reds, shimmery curtains and luxurious carpets, scattered in rose petals...you really couldnt get more romantic or different to what we had experiened outside.
it was tempting in some ways to just hide out in the riad but that is not what marrakech is all about so we headed out almost immediately. with a much better map.
riad courtyard
ambient lighting in our room
the medina was an overwhelming blend of pots, pans, sandmen, lanterns, funny leather shoes, fruits, vegetables, herbs, french pastries, huge hunks of meat, insincere ce vas?, burkas, lentils, spices, etc, etc, etc which we whizzed past at a frantic pace to avoid unwanted attention (we chilled out a bit later).
djemaa el fna
teapots
me in a relatively quiet medina lane
mint tea on our terrace
yum!
anyway, we continued like this for three days, eating delicious food in and around marrakech's djamaa el-fna, which is famously full of snake charmers, story tellers and orange juice, seeing the sights and recovering in our riad....
i have always liked the idea of having a open area in the middle of a house but i have to say having our toilet window next to the communal dining table was a lil off-putting, possibly more for the other guests than us.
our next choice in the choose your own adventure was - do we head to the beach or the mountains? beach/mountains... we chose moutains. we've seen beaches before. plus it is only a 4 hour hop, skip and a jump over to the other side.
high atlas and ourzazate (warning: slightly whingy bit)
the journey over the atlas mountains started out rather inauspiciously (nothing new) with us being stuck in marrakech for an hour or so because there was a marathon. no drama. climbing up into the atlas mountains was pretty impressive. patches of snow started to appear as we climbed further and soon we were surrounded in white. and then the bus stopped. it was time for lunch and rohan was dying for a pee so it was good timing really. only problem was it didnt seem like we were going to head off any time soon (again - no english speakers around) our four hour trip was slowly getting longer, the bus driver kept rather annoyingly starting up the engine, raising our hopes and then killing it.
picturesque high atlas
we waited at least four hours before we headed off, slowly through the snow, with the light fading. i think rohan and i were in single file at this stage as the windows had began to leak. the driver decided that arabic music was a good idea. as we got higher, we went slower, and it got colder and darker. it wasnt long til we stopped again. i couldnt really see what was going on and didnt really want to - i was asking rohan helpful questions like ' how long do you think we could survive out here?'. When the bus started up, conked out and slid into the snow plow next to us on the pass was when i started to think 28 was not a bad innings. i plugged into the iriver and resolutely listened to Happy Music (the equivalent of closing my eyes, blocking my ears and la-la-laing) and offered up promises to the gods of bad travel (i lost count of how many over the two weeks - probably should try and come good on a few of these). but we made it (obviously) 10 hours later, chilled to the bone (my jumper had been under the bus for the trip) and with no iriver battery remaining. the worst was yet to come.
so happy to get off the cold, damp smelly bus i grabbed my soaking bag and headed to the terminal, giving pretty convincing death stares to any touts - we werent too bothered by them. but then, what i thought was melted snow didnt smell much like melted snow, no, it was the unmistakable smell of pee...that's right, U-rine. i think of the human male variety. not only now on my bag, but my gloves, my jumper. but i had promised i would be thankful to be alive so rohan and i decided to check into the most expensive, flashiest hotel we could find. and have the buffet. it is probably worth noting that i was very hormonal at this point.
ourzazate isnt known as a particuarly atmospheric place, and our flashy hotel had seen better days, but it was warm, sunny and we chilled out, did some laundry, tried (unsuccessfully) to eradicate the smell of piss and organised a hire car to travel out to the desert and then around the anti-atlas to the coast.
lunch in ourzazate
view from ourzazate kasbah
zagora and the anti-atlascar-tripping through the desert and anti atlas was pretty spectacular. the road to zagora is one of the old caravan routes from timbuktu to marrakech. it is just like the books with oasis springing from red desert and mud kasbahs dotted over the landscape. the morrocans are pretty crafty with mud. this is probably not a very pc comparison but it reminded me of wasps...anyway, zagora is also not particularly exciting in itself and generally used as a base for caravan trips. When our hotel owner asked us if we wanted to go for a camel trip (of course!) it was a bit of a shock to find out that he had three camels in the back yard! i dont think rohan is a natural born camel rider -unfortunately he had all the cameras so you cant be the judge.
walk like a camel
the landscape between zagora and taroundannt, south of marrakech was unlike anything i had seen before. mostly it was vast, red and arid. had the same sense of space that you get out on the hay plains. we came across very few people travelling, although when we stopped for a photo op children would appear from nowhere. once, when rohan stopped near a mine i saw a kid bolt up from his town in the valley to sell us a rock. we had to buy it even though rocks are not great travel items.
one thing we couldnt avoid noticing on the roads was the ever present grey army. after grande taxis, the next most common road vehicle was great white mobile homes manned by the older europeans and at every town there was a little village of these people. i took quite a bit of care to cover up so it was a bit of a shock to see so much (old) bare flesh when these types were around.
tafraoute
the next highlight (for me anyway) was the little town of tafraoute. the drive through the valley to get to this town was incredible with remote little villages surrounded by almond, olive and argan trees. each town had a circular stone slab, where a donkey grids the olives or almonds. Tafraoute itself was pretty quiet and unassuming, the area around is quite different to the valley we drove through and looks like the wild west. we read about some belgian artist (jean someone -i should look this up) who painted a heap of boulders out of town in the 80's. they are now a bit worse for wear now but you get the idea. reminded me of when as kids we decided to paint all the tree trunks in our back yard different colours.
the coastwe headed to agadir (package tourist land) to return our hire car. horrible place. highly unreccomended. Our VW Gol (no 'f', no alot of things) decided it had had enough of us 100km from town when a huge cloud of smoke appeared behind us. after a bit of a rest we coaxed it back onto the road and it got us very slowly to agadir to the disgust of the rest of the traffic on the road. the car sounded like it was going to break down any minute and i managed to miss a bypass around a quite busy town and we were not happy campers heading into agadir. we spent the night there and headed out the next day to the lovely seaside town of Essaoira - i think the highlight for both of us. we also got to meet a local lady as the bus was full so we caught a taxi. she was lovely and spoke near perfect english! women seem to be very much in the shadows of public life in morocco, although if you do see them they are busy working (seeminly unlike the men) so we rarely had any contact with any women. There was a good swell off the coast which mesmerised rohan so i was kinda glad we had given up the hire car otherwise a (very quick) 2 hour journey might have taken alot longer knowing how rohan likes to stop to watch waves.
Essaouira
Essaouira is a gorgeous, chilled out Marrakech on the coast. All the buildings are whitewashed with blue shutters, the medina is full of interesting arts and crafts. european artists have been drawn to the town and bought up real estate and it shows. we stayed in another stunning riad that was all sweetness and light with a fantastic ocean view. the town also has a bustling working port which was pretty fishy and incredible. it is also known for being extremely windy so there is a huge kite and wind surfing culture there.
from essaouira we headed back to marrakech for one last night.
oh i'm tired after all that - we are expecting heaps of snow tonight!
for some reason the pics are playing up - i'll have a look tomorrow.
