Aroumd and a mule with no name

Had the worst night sleep yet at the Motel Marrakech – there was an annoyingly loud buzzing noise in the room that we couldn’t seem to do anything about.  It was an electrical box (somewhat alarming) that sounded like something a hoard of angry bees, so I had barely four hours sleep, unfortunately.  :/

We left Marrakech by private bus this morning heading for the village of Aroumd. Aroumd is in the High Atlas Mountains and to get there, we needed to first take the bus to the village of Imlil (it was roughly 2 hours from Marrakech) On the way we stopped at what is known as ‘Winston Churchill’s Morocco’, which is basically a spot where he came and painted a town – this one actually:iFor some unknown reason there were people there hawking super cheap ‘genuine’ silver jewellery and some dude with a snake wanting to get it up into your face for photos.
And a small tagine shopping village – whereever there are tourists there are shopping opportunities. Local mosque: Some high-speed landscape photography on the way there… We arrived at the main village of Imlil, where we stored our main luggage and took an o’night pack to walk into the village of Aroumd.  It is a one hour trek up a bloody steep and rocky mule track to get to the village and if you’re like me and you have a fucked back or mobility issues, you can ride a mule up instead.  I made a particularly sane choice and decided to ride the mule up…not that riding the mule is an easier option, you’re hanging on for dear life on steeper sections and actual stairways, but I think this hike would have taken me about three times longer than anyone else, and I’m not sure my hips would have thanked me for it for days. I was given a mule and asked Samirr to ask the handler what his name was (my guide only spoke Berber, no English or French), and it turned out my sturdy friend had no name, so I promptly dubbed him ‘Frank’ for the duration. Anyway, Frank and I plodded up the mountain while most of the rest of our group walked up in front of us.  He was certainly sure-footed, though not quite as sure-footed as the mules I remember in Nemrut Dagi back in Turkey years ago.

About half-way up we all stopped for a break, and I just sat around on Frank feeling like a noompty. At the top, the views were magnificent.  Back down the valley, the village of Imlil seemed very happily situated.

And once we reached the village of Aroumd there were lovely views of the High Atlas Mountains.  Wandering around the town, there wasn’t a lot to see – there was a four hour hike down into another valley and to see a shrine (a painted white rock) where people pilgrim to be cured of epilepsy (the Berber people believe that epilepsy is a condition where the human is possessed by evil spirits and can be ‘fixed’ by miracles which occur when coming here and saying lots of Koranic verses over the afflicted).  It might have been interesting to go see it – but I kinda googled some images and decided the walk down and back simply wasn’t worth it. So instead we went for a wander around the town to see how the Berber mountain people lived. Life seems very simple here – the farming of apples, walnuts and other frost hardy fruits, some goat herding and well, fleecing tourists seems to be the primary industries.  We were staying in a traditional ‘gite’ or Berber guesthouse which was very colourfully decorated: T
The purple and orange was a particular treat.

Our little room for the night was bigger than a Shinkjuku APA hotel room, but only just. We discovered all the power points were at waist heigh above the ground and none of the furniture was – so necessity being the mother of invention.  😛
After everyone was done with their exploring (only the five new arrivals to our group went for the walk to the shrine)  we came back together for a traditional Berber meal consisting of lamb tagine and vegetables, and fruit. 

Then it was up onto the terrace for a bit of stargazing, which was super confusing because nothing was in the night sky where I expected to see it!  Before early everyone collapsing early.  My ride with Frank certainly made the day bearable, but hanging on like you have to has caused my neck and shoulders to feel like they’re burning.  Stupid nervous system.

Hopefully nothing that some drugs and some sleep can sort out.

Marrakech Cooking Class

Well, we had a rocky start today. Not sure exactly what happened but at breakfast, we found out that we had to move hotels today at 09:00.  Either Samirr fucked up and failed to tell us, or Intrepid fucked up and hadn’t booked properly for all of us… we haven’t been able to figure it out.  But our plan had been to head down the Palais Royal this morning and instead, we were packing and moving our stuff to a different hotel just four doors down the street, and putting things into storage there as rooms wouldn’t be ready until well after midday…?  We weren’t overly happy, but there were some of our group who had breakfasted stupid early and head out to do things to miss the crowds, so they came back to the hotel late in the afternoon only to be told we had all moved?!  I haven’t done an organised tour like this in years, so I can’t say if this is ‘normal’ but a communication breakdown like this does not lead to good reviews nor does it lead to good tips at the end of the tour.

We eventually made it to the medina around 11:30 to do a bit of shopping before Zita and I had to meet up for a cooking class we had booked.  When we arrived at the Square it was even more madhouse than yesterday – if that is at all humanly possible.  Still plenty of noisy monkeys, snakes, watermen and whatnot, but the winding narrow alleys were CROWDED beyond belief.  Way too much humanity if you ask me!

Undeterred, we did manage to dive in and get some shopping done.

Grinding spices for the tourists… or rather tourists rather inelegantly and ineptly grinding spices for shits and giggles. Cones of ‘spices’ for display… this is literally a timber or cardboard cone with spice coloured cement over it to lure tourists into the shop to look for things – this is not the bright coloured piles of spice you are looking for!

At the main entrance to the medina are two walls lined with a homage to the current king – lots of photos, trinkets and mementos. The populace seems to really love him and his modern ideas for improving Morocco and its infrastructure and social programs. Shopping, shopping, shopping.  So many lovely things; so much of it so hard to bring home. At least this stall had piles of spices that were actually made of spice. I’m in love with this silk rug – it’s probably made in Turkey though, based on the design and the knot count. We managed to find the store again, so now I have a week or so to think about whether I really want it when we get back to Marrakech. More knitted beanies in every size and colour… Rug stores. Everywhere. Cane and wicker baskets and handbags. More leather goods – some of it fantastic, some of it tacky as all shit. The poofes aren’t as nice as the ones we saw in Fez, which is a shame. Carved timber – all I can see is having to get in the ‘something to declare’, line when coming back into Australia.  :/ After nearly three hours and four kilometres of wandering around the medina, we found ourselves back out in the Square where we needed to meet our cooking class guide/teacher.  This is a very popular spot for tourists to sit and watch the world go by. Zita and I met up with Hannan, our mentor for the afternoon, and she set us off at a brisk pace through the medina to buy ingredients for our meals.  Turns out that it was just the two of us, so we had a private little group which was lovely.  We marched past about a kilometre of touristy handicraft shops before popping out in a slightly slower-paced area of food shops more populated by locals.

I had a look at the map and we were well off the tourist track this deep into the medina (the Mhamid Marrakech site is the main Square).  First stop was the chicken shop, whereupon Hannan chose a live chicken.
The poor thing was quickly weighed, and before Zita could say, ‘Are we going to have to pluck it?’, it was swiftly slaughtered and skinned.  Yep, that’s right, skinned. I saw, just after the poor chicken lost its head and feet, the butcher de-feather and deskin the bird in a very swift very smooth and obviously practised motion – much like how one skins a rabbit.  I was actually quite surprised, I didn’t know you could clean a chicken that quickly – the whole transaction barely took two minutes. Buying live chickens is no doubt the result of there being very poor (if any) refrigeration in the medina.
Next stop was to buy some fresh produce, some of which bounced off the ground a few times and yet still ended up in the basket to come back to the Riad. We bought tomatoes, onions, garlic, capsicum, sweet potato, beans and other various items that I probably would walk right past at home. After this, we stopped to buy some preserved lemons and some olives at a different little store… preserving lemons is not difficult, but takes months, so the locals tend to buy them already preserved. The final stop was to buy some spices – you’ll note that this deep in the medina, there are no fancy cones of pretty spices to attract the tourists, just dump bins of spices for the locals to buy. Here, we bought some ground ginger, cumin, ground coriander, mixed spice and sweet paprika.. not all of which ended up in our dishes? Another 600m or so of winding streets and we found ourselves at the Riad where we would be doing our cooking.  It was amazing how it was so chaotic out in the alleyways (full of women marching with purpose, motorbikes zooming around the alleys, bicycles pinging their bells, touts yelling for your attention, and under-employed men seemingly just loitering about everywhere), yet as soon as you stepped into the Riad, it was quiet and peaceful.  You couldn’t hear a single two-stroke motorcycle going past and the sounds of the touts and tourists seemed miles away.
Hannan laid out all the ingredients we were going to need for our dish, while we made mint tea.
Making the mint tea is quite a process, and now I understand why it seems to take so long to prepare when you order it at a cafe.
Then it was onto the cooking!  We had our fresh chicken, produce and spices, and Hannan led us, step by step, through making a chicken tagine with preserved lemons and olives. It was a lot of fun and we learned a lot about Moroccan everyday life as well. Zita wrangling the garlic press into submission. Eventually, all the onions had been sliced, the garlic all pressed, the chili finely chopped, fresh coriander and parsley minced, and spices added.  Then the mixing.  By hand…which I was somewhat reluctant to jump into…… And which, naturally resulted in this:  ‘Don’t worry, don’t worry, I have lotion to get it off later.’  Hmmm… sure. Our tagine went onto the gas while we prepared a Moroccan salad comprising of peeled and seeded tomatoes, red onion, and grilled green bell pepper, plus lemon, herbs, spices, and a tiny bit of olive oil. After the salad was set aside to soak in its own juices, we set to making the third course, a fruit dish of sliced orange, prunes, sultanas, honey, cinnamon and orange blossom water. Which was perfectly timed to then check on the tagine and add some olives and the preserved lemon peel. While the tagine was finishing cooking, we were encouraged to have a look around the Riad and found ourselves up on the roof.  Most Moroccan homes have a rooftop space to recreate on hot summer evenings.  A lot of people will sleep on the roof if the nights are really hot. This Riad has created some particularly lovely spaces for their guests to relax and enjoy in a really nice rooftop patio.  You could hear the noises of the medina up here, but it still felt distant being four floors down. I was keen to see across the rooftops to see how crammed it all looked.  All the buildings are definitely packed in tight.  Medieval town design, clashing with modern living. Unfortunately, when I looked down over the side of the patio, I saw this… on two sides of the Riad, were two enormous holes in the ground that are basically being used as rubbish dumps.  No one lives in these spaces, and no one is looking after these spaces.  It seems mad that there could be hundreds of these dilapidated spaces that were once buildings sprinkled throughout the medina when space is at such a premium.  I honestly can’t understand it. Who owns the space? Why did they fall into disrepair?. In stark contrast, by the time we came back downstairs, the table had been set with the good flatware, and our bread warmed under the fancy bread warmer, and the dinner we had prepared was served to us. The Moroccan salad was really quite tasty, and I am not normally a fan of bell peppers at all.  Skinning and seeding the tomatoes made them extraordinarily sweet compared to how we usually serve tomatoes in salads at home. A little spice pot shaped like tiny joined tagines was on the table with salt, pepper and cumin to add to our dish if we so desired.  I have seen these little pots everywhere in the medina for sale and had no desire or plan to bring one home, but now it seems almost essential. And, finally, ‘la piece de resistance’, our chicken tagine with preserved lemons and olives – and OMG was it delicious.  It was literally the best chicken tagine I’ve tried since we arrived in Morocco – and we’ve shared about five at various restaurants so far.  Just a really fabulous combination of fresh ingredients and a nice balance of spices resulted in spectacular flavours.
Admittedly, Zita and I couldn’t come anywhere near finishing the chicken dish, so I hope the family’s children enjoyed their dinner (no doubt they are sick to death of this dish!), but we had to leave some space to try the honied orange slices we had prepared.  This was a truly simple and refreshing finish to a lovely meal.

It was after eating, however, that I asked for the ‘lotion’ to try and remove some of the stains from my hands… only to be given a bottle of bleach.  Yeurck!  And now my hands are sort of burning, still a little bit yellow and well, they still stink of bleach five hours later.  Live and learn, I guess… not that they would have had any disposable gloves for me to use to rub the spice into the chicken anyway.  *shrug*

After this, it was time to dive back into the chaos of the medina – and holy shit!  I thought it was chaotic earlier in the day, now it was just beyond hectic.  As part of the end of year celebrations that were going on – there was a concert happening in the Square, some famous French performer who we had never heard of, but who was attracting a crown of some 40,000 people.  There were roads blocked off, traffic being re-routed, and a huge area covered in security for paid ticket holders and thousands of more people lining the outer areas of the Square and the surrounding rooftops.

Hannan power walked us through the medina and, to be honest, I’m surprised that neither of us either tripped or was run down by a motorbike. People, just everywhere! The locals on their motorbikes tear around the tiny streets – as soon as you hear one behind you or see on in front of you, you have to dive to flatten yourself against the walls or risk being run over.  Seriously, they don’t slow down and they won’t stop for anything other than a larger vehicle or maybe a donkey or a large handcart – it sure gave us an appreciation for Fez’s vehicle-free medina.  We damn nearly ran the 1.9kms back to the Square where we grabbed onto our belongings for dear life and dodged and pummeled our way through the crowds to try and find a taxi.  It was an assault on the eyes and the ears, so noisy and dangerous and I have rarely been so glad to be out of a place.  Note to anyone thinking of coming to Marrakech – check the ‘What’s On’ calendar before choosing your dates!  I honestly can’t describe how crazy this was, and I really wish I had video’d part of our mad dash out of there – but I honestly could not keep my person safe, keep an eye on the uneven ground, another eye on Hannan who was weaving in and out of the people like a pro, as well as try to operate a camera that would be a target for an opportunistic thief!  It was totally nuts!

And now, I’m well-fed, have yellow hands and am fucking exhausted.

Marrakech

We have two days to explore Marrakech at the moment, and then will be back here at the end of the trip for another two days, so having just got off the rather uncomfortable sleeper train and having dumped our luggage at the hotel (but our rooms wouldn’t be ready until after midday) we decided we’d be taking it a bit easy this morning.  We also needed to do some chores (like finding a laundry service etc) and as such we ended up pottering around for most of the day. Some of our group, who are only here for the day or a day and a bit, hit the ground running and were trying to see as much as they could – quite understandably!  But thankfully we had the luxury of a bit of time.

Laundry safely squared away with a cheerful little man at a shop around the corner, we gathered with a few others from our group who were also up for a laid back morning and went to find a coffee shop.  It was already well gone 11am by this point so we knew we weren’t going to get much done today.  After a sufficient amount of nous nouse (milky white coffee) and Moroccan mint tea was consumed, we decided to wander over to the Yves St Laurent gardens, also known as the Jardin Majorelle.  Unfortunately, once we arrived we discovered that half of Morocco had the same idea this Saturday morning and there was a queue of some 200 people in one direction and another queue of 200 odd people in the other direction (one queue for families, one for adults without children – I have no idea why) all lined up in the sun waiting to go into the gardens!  Some quick googling told us the gardens were pretty, but they weren’t ‘line up for an hour to get in and try and take some photos with five hundred other people crammed in there’, pretty!

So we did an about-face and did a little shopping in the nearby avenue instead with Zita, planning to head back to the hotel, find some lunch and hit the medina not long after.  We shopped for quite a bit through some nice little shops with polite and standoffish staff – how refreshing!  I saw an amazing mirror made with a mosaic style frame, which I would have loved to take home… it was the most amazing object.  It also had an enormous matching trunk beside it – of course, the only things in the whole shop I like are huge and would need to be shipped, and of course, that mirror is 25,000 DH (approximately AUD$3,800 before shipping!) because somewhere in my life I have acquired ridiculously expensive tastes!

Apparently it is made of camel bone and coloured stone. So I imagine the shipping is probably nearly much as the item.
After that, we stumbled fortuitously onto a bottle shop (as you might expect they are few and far between in Morocco), and then back to the hotel for a cheap and cheerful lunch and a shower and a nap.  Cold shower, unfortunately – the hotel seems to turn the hot water off during the middle of the day very likely to save money as no one is really in their rooms, but there’s me washing my hair in a cold shower and it’s barely 18C out.  *rolls eyes*

We eventually decided to go down the medina late afternoon, and it was a complete zoo… I mean that quite literally – cats and dogs wandering, horses and carts for riding around town, monkeys to sucker in unsuspecting tourists for photos, snakes and snake charmers – the place was hectic, noisy, smelly and just like being at the Ekka but with the smell of spices, and grilled meats cooking in the air.  Oh, and unlike the Ekka, men with snakes kept walking towards us with snakes wanting to hang them on us!  Hells no!
And loud?  OMG, so loud.  There was a huge stage set up, pumping out rock music with kids dancing on the stage, and probably 10,000 people squished into the square at this point.  This is Marrakech on a Saturday evening just before New Years.  A complete madhouse!

We wandered around the medina for a while, having a look at the shops, ceramics, brass, rugs, pashmina, lanterns, leather, produce, spices, and all the good things.  Fell in love with a gorgeous silk-on-cotton rug – which of course was not at all Moroccan! No matter how hard the shop seller tried to tell me it was made in Casablanca, you could easily tell by the design and the knotwork that it was far more likely to have been made in Turkey or Iran (which Samirr confirmed later at dinner – Morocco only makes Berber style rugs, not the typical Eurasian / Persian rugs at all.   Seems to be my MO though – go to Turkey, buy a rug from Balochistan, go to Balochistan, buy a rug from Esfahan, so maybe going to Morocco and buying a rug from Turkey makes sense somehow?!

Walking around the medina while it is so busy is not overly fun – especially not when, ‘travelling while blonde’ in a Muslim country.  I don’t normally wear my hair out when I’m in places like this as I already gain a lot of unwanted attention by virtue of being very fair in complexion, but when I left the hotel, my hair wasn’t quite dry so I didn’t put it up. Stupid move.  This afternoon/evening, I had SO many people staring at me everywhere we went.  Mr K thinks it’s funny.  Me?  Not so much. Depending on where and how many people we are talking about, it makes me feel quite unsafe.  This afternoon I  noticed multiple men trying to surreptitiously take my photo. Women look at me and then look me up and down like I’m some sort of whore.  I had one guy Facetime chatting with a friend, putting the camera up over his shoulder to show him the blonde woman behind him… and so on and so on.  It’s not a lot of fun.  At least here, the people just stare at the pale blonde woman, and keep a respectful non-contact distance – no one has touched me inappropriately or assaulted me here, unlike China where I had men pulling on my hair, women throwing babies into my arms and taking my photo, men touching me all the time, and a couple of really skeezy older men pretending to sneeze and then fling themselves face-first into my chest.  😐

Eventually, we met up with the gang for a nice rooftop dinner.  Dinner was another lovely tagine affair, which we shared with roughly five kittens.  Two of whom were so friendly we had trouble keeping them off the dinner table!  Needless to say, much hilarious ensued and much Purell was consumed.

We have finished the first part of our tour in northern Morocco and five members of our group were leaving us today.  The second half of our trip into the mountains and the Sahara starts tomorrow and we gain four new travellers… poor buggers, I feel a bit sorry for them.  We’ve become quite an established group now with our own in-jokes and stuff.  We will have to try hard to make sure the newcomers don’t feel excluded.
The square only got busier as the evening wore on… probably twice as many people as there was earlier in the afternoon. … and then the shit fight for a taxi back to the hotel ensued.  The first cabbie wanted to charge us 100DH for what should be a 20-30DH trip.  We tried a couple more and ended up caving at a 50DH ride because ‘is very busy tonight, very busy’, and also because it was getting a bit late and one of our small group needed to hurry back before the laundry closed to get their things.

All up a long day, walked about 8kms with no major sightseeing of shopping accomplished, on very little sleep.  Oh well, there’s always tomorrow – they can’t all be Chefchaouen.  😉

 

Tangier

It’s 0645 and I’m currenlty on an overnight sleeper train from Tangier to Marrakech, writing this in the pre-dawn darkness.  Mr K is still asleep and I’ve had a shit of a night trying to get some sleep, so I thought I’d give up and write about yesterday.

We left the beautiful Chefchaouen around 0930 to head to Tangier, which was a drive of about three hours by private bus.  The drive was not too painful and we didn’t stop too may times thankfully… I’m not used to travelling with tour companies, but at home if we have a nine hour drive we’d barely stop twice for fuel or food.  So the previous four hour drive that took nearly seven was not fun.

Our first gliimse of Tangier.  As most people know, Tangier has had a tempestuous and mottled past as a gateway between Europe and Africa.  Its history is full of invasions, occupations, diplomatic intrigues, spies, war time discussions and all sorts that I’m not going to go into here (Google it if you’re interested).  We pretty much arrived around lunch time given we left so late and so we head to a local Lebanese restaurant for something to eat down near the rather modern marina area. Lunch was lovely – best hummus ever, and then we set off on a tour of the headland to see the landscape.The views from the National Park over the Mediterranean on the north side of the city. Tangier has some very, very expensive real estate and many famous and wealthy people live in these areas, and of course the King of Morocco has another palace here too. On the other side of the point is the Atlantic Ocean. This lighthouse was constructed in 1884 and from here you can see where the two bodies of water meet. The deep blue of the Mediterranean meeting the murkier green of the Atlantic.

On a clear day, you can see Spain from here, though today was a little too hazy for that. A man and his donkey. Not sure why they are here, there’s not loads of steps for them to ferry people up and down, but there are quite a few guys here in their funny hats with their cute donkeys just loitering around the tourists. Throughout the national park, they have a massive boar problem – they’re destroying the ground and, as Samirr pointed out, no Muslims will eat them.  So they’re breeding out of control and no one is hunting or culling them.

I found the eucalypts everywhere to be really intersesting – they are planted largely to stabilise the soil and stop the erosion, which makes sense, they’re drought hardy and they make a great hardwood. Self explanatory I think… We then stopped by a very popular beach – there was no one here at the moment becuase it was barely 20C, which is freezing cold for Moroccans, and the wind was just about blowing us off the bluff.  We saw more than one hat making a dash for escape today. After this we went to the Cave of Hercules which is a system of long caves, half natural half manmade by th Phoencians and the Berber peoples.  The Phoenicians are believed to have carved out the sea entrance to the cave to look like the shape of Africa… though how, they knew what that shape was, I’m not entirely sure.  The Berber used to come down to carve out round wheels of stone to make millstones . I went to the bathroom here because there was a fair chance it wasn’t a squat toilet and might be pretty clean – and nearly had my head bitten off by a rude little woman over the toilet coins.  Now, I’ve travelled all over, and am accustomed to keeping a few small coins in my back pocked to pay the ladies who clean the bathrooms, but this woman was demanding 5DH to use the loo – that’s 5 x more than any other loo I’d enountered so far.  When I asked why, she said ‘le pappiere, le pappiere’… I pulled out my tissues and said ‘I have my own paper. 2DH’… and she just would not let me use the facilities without giving her 5DH.  Which I reluctantly did (it’s not much money).  When I came out, Mr K was coming out of the men’s room and I asked him how much it cost, he said 2DH.  Naturally this made me a little indignant, but I wasn’t going to make a fuss over it.  However, Mr K marched over to her and had a go at her and got my ‘pink tax’ back!  It was both annoying and hilarious at the same time.  I asked others from our group who went in after me, how much they paid and they all paid 2DH… so go Mr K, saving the ladies from discrimination.  The little old lovie obviously wan’t game enough to rip anyone else off. 😛

Back on the road we stopped for a view over Tangier – there are about 1.1million people living here now.

Our next stop was the Cafe Hafa which was founded in 1921, and was apparently a favoured hang out of Jimi Hendrix and his mates.

Apparently the cafe isn’t considered very family friendly – there’s no alcohol allowed here, but there’s plenty of turning a blind eye to sitting around smoking pot with your sweet Moroccan mint tea. After a chill spot for a while, with some mint tea and a few biscuits, we set off on a 7km walk around the town to see a bit of Tangier and the old median area.  I have to admit, after the stunningly gorgeous Chefchaouen, the city struggled to provide visual delights. In the souk, there are the same sorts of stalls – produce, meats, seafood, dates and figs, spices etc.  Again Samirr warned us against buying spices here, as they were laced with dust and crap. The cut flower industry in Africa really worries me – I know these flowers all come from down near Namimiba where the countryside is drought sticken, but where large European flower conglomerates are tapping the groundwater to grow flowers for the European markets… it’s so fucked.  We are tapping subterranean water aquifers in Qld for fucking coal mines and the Europeans are tapping them to grow bloody roses for the European markets.  Say ‘NO’ to cut flowers people – they’re killing our stock, our farmers and our wildlife. Our walk eventually led us right back to the marina development where we had lunch, which I have to say, was much prettier at night.

We then went to a local home for a dinner.  Judging by the cost of dinner per person 100DH and the fact that they had a captive audience of Intrepid pax coming through, they were obviously quite a well to do family – and were immediately greeted by this: I love pink – but that is just … something else!
Dinner was lovely, a harissa soup, vegetable couscous and a huge chicken and olive tangine dish.  But felt a little overpriced compared to other places we had been dining at.  Will have to give some feedback on that one in the trip notes. After dinner, we head off to the train that I am still sitting on!  I was really nervous about this stupid train ride – with my chronic pain condition the last thing I needed was to find myself unable to sleep and unwilling to disturb my bunk mates.  I foresaw myself spending 10 hours stuck in a bunk trying to lay still and remain quiet so as not to disturb anyone, while grinding my teeth and tossing and turning in pain.  :/ 

So, as a preemptive measure, Mr K and I decided to pay the extra to get the compartment to ourselves… cos, yeah, I don’t mind distrubing him in the middle of the night.  It might not have been necessary as I managed to get about 4.5hrs sleep (I doubled down on all the drugs I had on hand) but I’ve been up and typing this and walking about and stretching, which I wouldn’t have been prepared to do if there were two other people in here.  All up a good strategic move I think – even though I’m fucking exhausted and really need more sleep.

And now, I’m up to date.  We arrive in Marrakech in a few hours and I’m not sure I have the energy for running around there much today. We do have all day here tomorrow and the next day, as well as two days at the end of our trip.  So I think, taking it easy today and seeing what we say may be in order tomorrow.  🙂

Chefchaouen – Shopping and the Kasbah

If you’re over the crazy blue walls and doors of Chefchaouen, then I suggest you close this now and come back tomorrow… this place has me entranced and this post is all:  blue, blue, and bluer!  🙂

We had a free day today to potter around this gorgeous little town and decided we would have a lazy start to the day today.  Attempted to sleep in – unsuccessfully which is no real surprise (my back is just not happy, especially seeing I’ve had to leave some medications at home) and we eventually went out to the terrace restaurant for breakfast around 9ish.

This is the view that greeted us from the terrace restaurant at the hotel over breakfast. Our room is the bottom one here – we were given the top floor, but gave it to Tess and Karl when I decided I didn’t really feel like walking up six flights of stairs every time we came and went from our room. After breakfast, we ran into Jake and Tyson, who were chilling out using the wifi in a little fabric lined antechamber off the hotel lobby.  They’re from California, both in college and travelling with their lovely grandparents, Chris and Allan.  They’re really nice guys, though sometimes listening to how they talk to each other makes me laugh.  They’re sure making themselves comfortable… Christian may be the only person we beat to breakfast, he’s from Quebec, and here he is looking out over the view from the terrace restaurant.

Anyway, there were only a few things on the very loose agenda today:  1) Get my phone to a Maroc Telecom and figure out why my SIM card is only ever getting 3G reception, 2) potter around the medina and have a good poke around the handicraft shops, 3) check out the Kasbah this afternoon and 4) buy a djouba (or two)

So we set off trying a different way to get around town through some less touristy worn streets to find the Maroc Telecom.  It was a 15 min walk or so and mostly downhill.  I have to say, Morocco needs to smarten its act up a bit on their stairs – we haven’t really seen a flight of stairs that are ‘regular height’ so it’s quite hard on the knees and ankles when going downhill, especially if you miscalculate the height of the step.

On our way to the telco, we wandered through some more residential type areas, which were just as blue as the main touristy streets. We met a lovely lady at the Maroc Telecom who was able to assist me with my 4G problem, in spite of my halting French.  She told me that my SIM wasn’t properly activated and promptly fixed it.  Service with a smile from a telco – who knew such things even existed?  After we left there, we decided to take a taxi around to the top of the springs where we pretty much started yesterday’s walk – it wasn’t much farther than we had just come, but it was all uphill through the very winding streets, and today was supposed to be a chill day – so we shelled out the exorbitant AUD$3 for a Petit Taxi.  Got to the top and there were men selling photos with their birds… I managed to sneak a picture of the guy’s peacock – but the guy standing beside an ostrich taller than he was, eluded me. And so we wandered through the narrow pedestrian walkways of the medina checking out the wares lining the streets… so many beautiful handmade things, so many beautiful blue alleys and so many very fancy doorways.
If felt like there were fewer people around this morning than yesterday evening – not sure if that was the case or if it was because we were trying to wander through the backstreets a bit more, but every time we stumbled back onto the main thoroughfares, it was not particularly crowded. Very fancy and intricate painting on these doors… my image shrinker has lost a lot of the detail, unfortunately. Souvenir hand-embroidered cloths. Me – standing in a very short, very blue, doorway. There were so many very funky hand-knitted beanies everywhere, and I had to stop myself from buying some – but, I think I’ve finally learned my lesson.  That lesson being – *You live in Brisbane and it’s rarely cold, you do not need twenty bloody woollen beanies collected from every weird place you go to!*. Well, at least the lesson seems to have held up for today, we will see if it makes it intact through the entire trip. This fountain is fed from the beautiful fresh and clean spring that we went to yesterday, though I have no idea what they have been washing here to make it look so unappealing.  Don’t care how clean the water is supposed to be, there’s no way I would fill my bottle from this fountain! Gorgeous altogether! In the back streets looking for interesting alleys and vistas and spied this very steep set of stairs… did a double-take and noticed this little guy: Sitting around like he owned the place.

We stopped for lunch down in the main square.  Coffee thick as mud, chicken shish, and kofka tagine.  Doesn’t take long to decide you could sure get used to this – a long black, a lemon soft drink, two lovingly cooked and very tasty main meals served with free bread, and we were up for a hefty AUD$15.00.

After lunch we went for a walk around the Kasbah and heard some the call to prayer happeining, as it does at regulour intervals during the day.  In this town, it seems to set the local dogs off.  And we heard these two, barking along – from above!  Took a momen to spot them and I have no idea how they got up there! Gorgeous facade on a local school: We then made our way into the Kasbah to have a look around.  The Kasbah in Chefchaouen was built in the 15thC and in contast to the blue city, it is terracotta-brown in appearance.  The Chefchaouen Kasbah contains a lovely Andalusian-style garden and a former prison. This prision reminds me of the one Kevin Costner finds himself detained in when captured by the Moors while on Crusade in the terribly historically inaccurate, but somewhat lovealbe film, (thanks Alan Rickman) Robin Hood Prince of Thieves (c.1990 something). Looking out from the prison to the Andaluscian gardens. Amazingly there are at least half a dozen huge and very established gum trees in the garden.  They might seem like a good idea, but I have a feeling if one of them comes down, they are giong to create one helluva mess of the ancient walls.  The Center for Research and Andalusian Studies is also here and currently undergoing renovations, so we could only see the lower levels at the moment.

After leaving the Kasbah, we went hunting for djubbas.  We saw some lovely wool ones, and for some reason the Sales Dude brought out this short pom pom’d thing for Mr K to try.  Swing and a miss, Mr Sales Dude. After that it was back through the mall by which time the buskers, touts, and generally annoying people trying to get your money had all started to turn out, and we decided it was time to head back to the hotel for a bit of rest before dinner with whoever turned out to be around at the time. 

We had a lovely, fairly chill day.  I love this town, it is visually stunning and there is lots of fun little alleys and back streets to explore.  I would definitely come back here and would happily stay at the Dar Echaouen again.  All round a wonderful place.

Tomorrow, however, is going to be somewhat hectic.  We have a bus ride to Tangier, followed by a city tour, a meal with a local family and then an overnight train to Marrakech… am doubting the sanity of this – but hoping it won’t be too bad.